Plantscraper in Sweden a pioneering urban farming initiative

Plantagon's geodesic greenhouse - Bucky Fuller would be proud!


Plantagon Breaks Ground on its First ‘Plantscraper’ Vertical Farm in Sweden!

by Molly Cotter, 02/14/12, Inhabitat.com

Several years ago a Swedish-American company called Plantagon unveiled plans for a series of massive skyscraper greenhouses that stood to transform urban farming in large cities. While the spiraling vertical farms seemed too good to be true at the time, Plantagon just broke ground on its very first vertical farm this week in Linkoping, Sweden! The “Plantscraper” will grow and supply fresh vegetables while creating solutions to some of the most vexing city pollution issues.

Plantagon seems to have traded in its initial geodesic dome design for a sheer tower that both contains and showcases the plants growing inside. This prototype building will be called the International Centre of Excellence for Urban Agriculture, and it will be a place for scientists to test new technologies aimed at improving urban farming.



Inside the massive glass walls, vegetables will be grown in pots and then transitioned to trays positioned around a giant central helix. The plants grow as the trays slowly migrate down the central core and are ready to be harvested once they reach the bottom. Plant residue and manure will be collected along the way and transformed into biogas to run the heating and cooling systems of the greenhouse. Scientists want the vertical farm to not only grow food but also help in developing sustainable solutions for energy, heat, waste, and water issues of daily city life.

Construction on the company’s first enormous vertical greenhouse is expected to take 12 to 16 months.

Origins of Green Design, Sustainable Buildings

Environmental design a key to survive, thrive

Sustainable design (also called environmental design, environmentally sustainable design, environmentally conscious design, etc.) is the philosophy of designing physical objects, the built environment, and services to comply with the principles of economic, social, and ecological sustainability. The intention of sustainable design is to "eliminate negative environmental impact completely through skillful, sensitive design". Manifestations of sustainable design require no non-renewable resources, impact the environment minimally, and relate people with the natural environment.

History of Sustainable Design




Anasazi solar village Acoma a pioneering effort

Acoma Pueblo ( /ˈækəmə/; Western Keresan: Aa'ku; Zuni: Hakukya; Navajo: Haakʼoh), also known as "Sky City", is a Native American pueblo built on top of a 367-foot (112 m) sandstone mesa in the U.S. state of New Mexico. Settled around 1100, it is one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in the United States.

The pueblo, believed to have been established in the 12th century or earlier, was chosen in part because of its defensive position against raiders. It is regarded as one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in the United States, along with Old Oraibi, Arizona, as both communities were settled in the 11th century. Access to the pueblo is difficult as the faces of the mesa are sheer (a topographic map shows this best). Before modern times access was gained only by means of a hand-cut staircase carved into the sandstone.

Wikipedia info on Acoma Pueblo

Acoma Pueblo architectural reconstruction

"Bright Green" environmentalism a 21st Century eco-movement

Bright green environmentalism is an ideology based on the belief that the convergence of technological change and social innovation provides the most successful path to sustainable development.


Bright Green Ecology on wikipedia.org




Sources: Wikipedia.org,

Farsighted towers around the globe; visionary new skyscrapers

W Hotel and Namaste Tower in Mumbai, India

Strata Tower, Namaste Tower, Hearst Tower and Fusionopolis; All innovative icons

Namaste Tower a vision of elegance and spirituality


With a proposed height of 300 m the tower will be seen from a distance of more than 40 km. Therefore the visual appearance of the project as a major landmark is of great importance to the city of Mumbai.

Views from the tower will extend to the South over the Mahalkshi Race course towards the Mumbai Peninsula and to the South West over the Indian Ocean. The views to the north East are towards a number of adjacent towers that are currently being constructed. The orientation and massing of the tower have been designed in order to make the very best of these visual relationships.







Hearst Tower, NYC’s First LEED Gold Skyscraper

Hearst Tower is located at 300 West 57th Street, 959 8th Avenue, near Columbus Circle in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York. It is the world headquarters of the Hearst Corporation, bringing together for the first time their numerous publications and communications companies under one roof, including, among others, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Marie Claire, Harper's Bazaar, Good Housekeeping and Seventeen.



The six-story base of the headquarters building was commissioned by the founder, William Randolph Hearst and awarded to the architect Joseph Urban. The building was completed in 1928 at a cost of $2 million and contained 40,000 sq ft (3,700 m2). The original cast stone facade has been preserved in the new design as a designated Landmark site. Originally built as the base for a proposed skyscraper, the construction of the tower was postponed due to the Great Depression. The new tower addition was completed nearly eighty years later, and 2,000 Hearst employees moved in on 4 May 2006.




The tower – designed by the architect Norman Foster, structural engineered by WSP Cantor Seinuk, and constructed by Turner construction – is 46 stories tall, standing 182 meters (597 ft) with 80,000 square metres (860,000 sq ft) of office space. The uncommon triangular framing pattern (also known as a diagrid) required 9,500 metric tons (10,480 tons) of structural steel – reportedly about 20% less than a conventional steel frame. Hearst Tower was the first skyscraper to break ground in New York City after September 11, 2001. The building received the 2006 Emporis Skyscraper Award. citing it as the best skyscraper in the world completed that year.

Hearst Tower is the first "green" high rise office building completed in New York City, with a number of environmental considerations built into the plan. The floor of the atrium is paved with heat conductive limestone. Polyethylene tubing is embedded under the floor and filled with circulating water for cooling in the summer and heating in the winter. Rain collected on the roof is stored in a tank in the basement for use in the cooling system, to irrigate plants and for the water sculpture in the main lobby. 85% of the building's structural steel contains recycled material. Overall, the building has been designed to use 26% less energy than the minimum requirements for the city of New York, and earned a gold designation from the United States Green Building Council’s LEED certification program, becoming New York City's first LEED Gold skyscraper.








Strata Tower; new showpiece of Abu Dhabi skyline

Strata Tower is a forty-story luxury residential building, designed by New-York based architects Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture of Asymptote Architecture, currently being built on Al Raha Beach, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Construction has begun and it is scheduled for completion by 2011. It is being developed by Aldar Properties.







Fusionopolis in Singapore - Urban greenery extraordinaire



The Singapore skyline has been getting greener these days with new developments from some of the world’s most renown architects. The latest design to join the trend is a new futuristic green building from architect Ken Yeang named Fusionopolis. A research and development complex, this structure will adorn Singapore as the island nation’s most eco-friendly skyscraper.

21stArch.com announces free Quarterly Architectural Magazine

Eco-friendly Quarterly Architecture e-Magazine

The sustainable, green and futuristic online architecture publication 21st Century Architecture Blog has just announced a new digital and FREE Quarterly Architectural Magazine, free signup form below!

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Cool New Buildings from around the World

Here are some fascinating and inspiring buildings; modern creative architecture from all over the globe:

Burj Al Arab Hotel, Dubai









Oceanografica in Valencia Spain








Vodafone building in Porto, Portugal








Centre for Sustainable Energy Technologies, China





Curvy building in Capetown, South Africa





National Aquatics Centre, The Water Cube - Beijing, China






Happy HolyDays and Peace 2 All,

Joe

Top 3 Stories, Solar Architecture in the news; NYC, China, Toronto

1. Brooklyn Army Terminal to get PV solar rooftop panels




New York City plans to install a 50,000-square-foot photovoltaic (PV) panel array at the office/industrial complex Brooklyn Army Terminal. The Smart Grid Demonstration Project will create the largest solar collector in the city, capable of producing at least 600,000 kilowatt hours of electricity each year, enough to power two percent of BAT’s electrical usage, or 120 NYC homes.

NYC solar architecture story on Architect's Newspaper website


2. Beijing student Dai Haifei builds portable egg house



Hunan City University architecture student Dai Haifei decided to innovate his way into the city of Beijing' architectural community with his self-designed Egg House.

Created for just $960, the egg-shaped house is portable, features a water tank, a small bed, and a lamp powered by a photovoltaic solar panel on the top of the structure. Haifei successfully lived in the structure on the street for a few months until local media attention forced him to abandon his tiny bamboo palace.

Photos of Egg House in Beijing China, designed by Hunan's Dai Haifei


3. Toronto architect and artist Paul Raff promotes green home designs



Toronto artist and architect Paul Raff, principal of Paul Raff Studio, specializes in environmentally friendly residential architecture. His homes and other projects have attracted international attention and include the Biosphere Sustainability Centre in the Thousand Islands region and the multiple award-winning Cascade House in Toronto.

Paul Raff interview with Deirdre Kelly of The Globe and Mail

Paul Raff Studio: Designing for Sustainability

Female Buildings: The FUTURE of Architecture

Greetings and peace 2 All!!! Welcome to 21st Century Architecture, your home for the future of green, sustainable buildings, where form meets functionality and humans become less of a drain on Gaia. To understand male architecture, one only needs to glance at a modern steel and glass skyline, which is penis-centric and angular, designed to maximize profits from a small footprint of land.

As fax machines and then the Internet have made downtown real estate less crucial, the need to go higher and higher has diminished if not disappeared. The future is not in length, but rather in what you do with it; 21st Century green buildings will be self-powered, self-heated and self-cooled, and will blend into their surrounding environments in surprising, eco-friendly ways.

Here are some images that I would consider to be female architecture, regardless of the gender of the architect: