Vertical Farm World

There’s a side effect after eating junk food or fast food: you eventually become sick and tired — the sweet too sweet, the salty too salty. We begin to forget that food is supposed to taste like in its original natural state. Around June of 2009, I was introduced to the new concept of Vertical Farming. Since then, I have had an increasingly growing interest about this topic. It is a merging concept and application of design, architecture, real estate, and environmental science. It is obvious that the world has been changing rapidly for quite some time, and I believe that we as humans we have come across something cool and useful. As we face the many challenges the future brings us, we have two choices: move forward or fall behind. If the vertical farm has the possibilities – to keep food natural, promote healthful living, avoid overuse of pesticides, fight poverty in developing countries, and etc. – then why not give it a chance? Although it requires strategies and is heavily resourced, I believe that if successful, the benefits will outweigh the disadvantages and the marginal benefits greater than the marginal costs.

-Vivian

 

Dickson Despommier talks to Next American City at his Columbia University office about what vertical farms would mean for cities and for the globe.

Source: americancity.org

http://americancity.org/daily/entry/1769/

Revisiting Vertical Farms

Next American City | Mon, Aug 24th, 2009 | Category: Interviews | Tags: next american city, hamida kinge, dickson despommier, vertical farms, columbia university

In perhaps the most public airing of his views and ideas to date, Dickson Despommier wrote an op-ed for Sunday’s New York Times about his “vertical farms” concept. In February, Hamida Kinge conducted a lengthy interview with Despommier, which appears below:

The way skeptics see it, Dickson Despommier has a lot of explaining to do: He’s got big plans for the future of farming. By 2050, the planet will have to feed three billion additional mouths, and traditional farms, which threaten food security by deforestation, the use of fossil fuels and ecosystem destruction, will not be able to hack it. Dr. Despommier, an environmental health scientist at Columbia University, believes the answer lies in the vertical farm, a glass-walled structure that can be designed as tall as a typical skyscraper, and can be located inside city bounds or around city limits.

It sounds quixotic at first, and Despommier readily admits that there is much he cannot answer until he secures funding to build a prototype. But he asserts that every process used in a vertical farm, from the agricultural to the mechanical, has been implemented in some capacity elsewhere, so there are no new mechanics or science involved. Still, vertical farms would be incredibly complex to build and operate, and consequently carry an enormous price tag, which is the main complaint of critics. The farms would also require accessory structures, like labs and seedling nurseries. Despommier intends the energy used by a vertical farm to be self-generating: Plant and waste-water solids would be incinerated to generate electricity. The host city’s gray water would be remediated and infused with nutrients to grow crops, a soil-less process called hydroponics. If the gray water plan works, it could save a city like New York – which dumps a billion gallons of remediated gray water into the Hudson each day – a lot of water and, consequently, a lot of money.

Furthermore, vertical farms would require plenty of staff—which would mean plenty of jobs, grins Despommier. He is fairly confident that, if a few vertical farms are successful, the government will begin to provide tax incentives to encourage their construction. Several cities and countries have expressed interest, including New York City, Shanghai, Masdar City (a zero-carbon solar city under construction in Abu Dhabi) and the country of Jordan. And Despommier believes it’s an especially good sign when a Nobel Prize winner likes your work: At last year’s World Science Forum, his concept won the praise of Steven Chu, the new head of the Energy Department. And anyway, Despommier wonders, with the stakes high for the future of food, is there really an alternative for the future of farming?

Next American City spoke with Despommier at his Columbia University office about what vertical farms would mean for cities and for the globe.

A New York Times article last year suggested that investments in vertical farms in areas of prime real estate would not be likely because other businesses would yield more of a profit. What’s your take on that?

Despommier: I don’t think you’d have a problem convincing developers that this would be a good idea because [vertical farms] would generate money, jobs, and become tourist attractions, I think. But for the most part, I don’t think you’d put [a vertical farm] on 5th avenue and 42nd street.

We took this idea to [an environmental justice] group called WE ACT. Five of our students had [to determine] what would happen if you placed a vertical farm inside Harlem. They showed [WE ACT] some of these designs and said, “We’re thinking about vertical farming inside the city.” And they asked, “What’s a vertical farm?” so that sat down and told them. And WE ACT said, “We’ll show you a place. Put it right here.” That’s how positive they were about it. Even [Manhattan Borough President] Scott Stringer, and Rosemonde Pierre-Louis, who is his deputy mayor for the borough, both have really strong feelings about wanting this to happen inside Manhattan. Where? I don’t know. But I can identify some other places. What about Floyd Bennett air force base? That’s 25 square miles of property that is unused. What about Governor’s Island? I would [also] like this retrofitted into schools, hospitals, senior citizens facilities, on the tops of apartment houses, maybe three of four stories.

If those real estate costs are high, and if the vertical farm employs several people, how would you keep food costs low?

There is no packaging in the vertical farm, so you can eliminate that cost. There’s no storage – [produce is] sold fresh daily. What you don’t sell, you recycle through the energy recapturing system because you don’t want it to rot. You could probably sell [leftovers] to value-added food processing. There’s no shipping. There’s no pesticides or herbicides or fertilizers used so there’s none of those costs. There’s no extra costs added for loss of crops due to weather and crop failures. And you get more than one crop per year because you’re continuously farming inside, so all of these things tend to lower the cost.
Give me an example of a country that is interested – one where it seems promising that they might fund a prototype.

One of the requests we have that we think will actually result in an initiative is from the country of Jordan. I’ve had an inquiry from two separate [US AID representatives from Jordan]. They want me to come visit Jordan to explore the possibility of working with Hyatt hotels to produce vertical farm-like settings inside the hotel so that they’re carbon neutral. You can integrate food production into the hotel as well as energy recapture and all these other things, because, remember, it’s a desert. You’ve got wonderful sun. You don’t have any water, but if you drill down deep enough you’ll have water too. So we can accomplish a lot. If you’re constrained by New York City building codes or something like that, you might not be able to do this. If you go to Jordan they will give you an open invitation to try whatever you like.

With crowding, congestion and traffic already an issue for cities, and the trend of populations moving back to cities, how would trucks pick up massive amounts of produce inside a city?

Maybe they do at it night, or you restrict them to times. I think that by locating the farms at the periphery [of a city], you can alleviate the (traffic) problem. 

But is it also possible to put them in dense areas inside the city?

If you’re talking about big commercial ventures like a 30-story building, that’s probably not going to be in the center of the city because getting enough light into the building would be a problem. But if you’re talking about integrating a vertical farm into a restaurant, a new restaurant or a new school or something else, then the answer is wherever you’d like one.

You support the systematic abandonment of the traditional farm. If that happens, every bit of the food they once produced would need to be replaced in a vertical farm, plus more because of population growth. What amount of acreage would one vertical farm replace for one traditional farm?

It’s an interesting statement you just made: “If we have to abandon our farms.” I hate to tell you this, but we’re already doing it. And they have to do it, not because of vertical farming but because farming is failing. The climate change issues now have determined that what you used to be able to grow, you can no longer grow. [Also], overuse of pesticides have worn out the soil and created terrible situations.

The food and agriculture organization for the World Health Organization has repeatedly said that if we could just put trees back to where they used to be, you could slow [climate change] down. So the answer to the question to the ratio of land indoors to outdoors—that would depend on the crop, but the number that I’ve been given from the world expert on indoor farming – his name is Gene Giacomelli [of the University of Arizona Center for Controlled Environment Agriculture]  is that on average, for one acre of indoor land you save four to six acres of outdoor land. That was for tomatoes. For other crops you can make that ratio go way up. There was a guy who raised barley, which he used to feed his animals. So he decided to do it inside of a big shed. He saved 200 acres by just stacking them all up inside. Then he let (the outdoor land) go back to natural grasslands. And the government sent him a check for that because he was restoring the environment. And he still fed his animals. So when you present farmers with these options, they start to think, “I don’t have to raise corn to raise money, I can raise trees to raise money. I’ll become a carbon farmer.” I don’t want to put [traditional] farmers out of business. I just want them to grow something else. 

Let’s talk about the science side of food security. How will indoor farms reproduce the natural processes of cross-fertilization that keep species strong and biologically diverse?

If you make seed banks…[you ensure] the ability to maintain [hybrid vigor]. In other words, you don’t get stuck with inbred strains of plants because they become highly susceptible to diseases. So [the vertical farm would have] some buildings that would grow crops just for seeds. Outside I think it’s more difficult because you can get big losses due to weather events and to pests and this sort of thing. Indoors you can control all of that. [Keeping diseases out] is an easy thing to do because we know how to do it with people. It’s how you treat people in the ICU of a hospital so I want to treat my plants the same way. It adds an expense to the building, but it’s worth it, because outside, you lose 50% of what you grow before it gets to the market.

Moving to the developing world: Your website says the vertical farm could be the answer to hunger in poor countries. How would the food be affordable to people who might survive on just a few dollars a week, if that?

It depends on the altruistic nature and stability of the country. So, for example, in India, the middle class gains about 25 million people per year. So what do you do about somebody who makes two dollars a day? How do you feed them with the concept of a vertical farm? And the answer is you don’t. I can’t use this as an example and I don’t pretend to do that. What I want to happen is: Prototypes will eventually lead to versions of the vertical farm and the people who can afford them first are the same people who can afford [a cell phone]. I can take you to India – everybody has one! How can you afford that? And the answer is: Because you know what it does and it connects the entire country, without the need for infrastructure.

So would philanthropists who have an interest in a developing country’s population be the primary investors in the vertical farms in those countries?

[Yes]. I know an organization in Duluth, Minnesota. A Nigerian physician has organized Nigerian physicians in this country and wants to go back to Nigeria and build a large school/hospital complex with a vertical farm. I haven’t heard from him in a while but what I suggested to him was to organize the Nigerians in this country – and Hakeem Olajuwan was one of those people. That’s a very wealthy person with deep interests in Nigeria (etc, etc). But a country’s [successful immigrants] can do a great deal of good.

Clearly the world’s rising population plays a role in our myriad environmental crises. How many people is too many for the planet, and if there is an amount, how to keep the population below that number?

That’s a loaded question! As long as they have all the essentials – clean water, safe food, clothing, shelter. There is no upper limit as long as we can ensure these things. Joel Cohen is a world expert on population and he refuses to address that question and so do I.

http://americancity.org/daily/entry/1769/

Cutting-Edge Hospitality Designs

Source: hdmag.com (hospitality design)

http://www.hdmag.com/hospitalitydesign/content_display/projects/e3i0d287909ecf291eb1aa42ff1bfdd58c4

What’s the Big Idea?

Feb 11, 2009 

By Rachel Long 

A hotel fashioned from an oil rig. One that delivers a truly urban experience. Another that achieves complete energy independence. And a fourth that is literally for the birds. All of these concepts took honors in the second annual Radical Innovation in Hospitality Awards, sponsored by the John Hardy Group and Hospitality Design (HD) magazine.

The finalists were selected from more than 40 entrants by an industry jury of John Hardy, president/CEO, the John Hardy Group; Claude Amar, principal, the John Hardy Group; Michael Medzigian, founding partner, Watermark Capital Partners; Pamela Parsons, senior vice president design and construction, Host Hotels & Resorts; Simon Turner, president, global development, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide; and James Woods, principal, Keen Partners, LLC. 

First prize, which included $10,000 in addition to bragging rights, was ultimately voted on by Hospitality Design Boutique Exposition & Conference (HD Boutique) attendees in Miami and went to Morris Architects for Oil Rig Platform Resort & Spa. Other finalist concepts included e | merse by WATG; the Wind Tower by Richard Moreta Architecture and MRA Design; Extreme Birding by Morris Architects; and a special prize, Pagoda by Danielle Meyer, a student (at the time) at the Art Institute of Colorado (she is now at Denver-based firm Box Studios).

John Hardy, who co-founded the competition in 2007 with Michelle Finn, vice president of Hospitality Design Group, praised the entrants for their creativity and futuristic concepts. “Last year’s competition was great, and this was a step forward. More people understand what we are trying to accomplish. One of our judges, Simon Turner, summed it up by saying, ‘It’s really similar to what you would see in a fashion show in Paris. You might not buy that dress on the runway, but it affects what happens down the line.’”

The Rig Hotel 
The quantity of abandoned rigs (4,000 to be decommissioned within the next century off U.S. shores) begs ideas for reinvention. Consequently, the Houston office of Morris Architects set out to create a self-sufficient, eco-friendly, high-end hotel experience in its own backyard—the Gulf of Mexico.

“Think of the sheer numbers. What do you do with this dead technology? That’s the sustainable proposition,” says Douglas Oliver, the firm’s director of design. Reclaiming rigs eliminates razing them (current practice), and retains their lush aquatic habitats (coral and sea life averaging 20,000 fish per rig). As hotels, they offer a rare opportunity to go beyond historic form. “Thematics don’t have to express an architectural past, but can embrace new technologies,” he says.

“The Rig is much like the ICEHOTEL. It’s that kind of unique experience. We were trying to create a hospitality experience that is unique and fully rounded, and interesting enough that people are interested in doing it. The work with the Rig is not to make it a one-liner, but to prove it as a serious proposition—really investigating it,” Oliver says. That included the use of alternative energy sources, and novel design around a core of water, which allows light to penetrate the rig’s center.

As for entering the competition (and placing two in the top four), Oliver recounts, “We were just slammed because of project commitments. The majority of this was on our own time. It gave us a really good way to stretch. It was a benefit to our mainstream hospitality work that we could work conceptually at this level.”

What led to thinking differently? According to Oliver, “When you really use sustainability as a catalyst, as part of the DNA of the architecture, it leads to innovation.”

e | merse 
Forget themed restaurants, exotic spas, and luxurious pools. The radical innovation team from WATG acknowledges that what works for traditional guests may not always entice Generation X and Y travelers. Enter e | merse Network, designed to deliver an authentic urban experience by meshing a hotel with its surroundings. 

According to Matt Page, designer at WATG, the idea emerged from a thinktank comprised of the firm’s Generation X and Y employees in the Irvine, California, office. The group explored their preferences in travel experiences to create the perfect hotel concept. “We wanted to experience a city by having the city become our hotel,” he says. Purposely limiting internal hotel amenities makes way for links to urban businesses, with interactive maps (thanks to personal GPS [global positioning system] technology) to help guests explore their site and activity preferences. 

Using a guest profile, completed before arrival, the hotel can help travelers find local businesses, restaurants, and clubs to fit their needs; network with other guests; and provide feedback on places they’ve visited and activities they’ve experienced. All e | merse locations will be linked to allow users ease of transfer, and the brand can even facilitate baggage being moved from one location to another. 

The multi-faceted nature of e | merse embraces several critical ideas, says Raj Chandnani, WATG vice president, strategy. Among them are urban renewal and revitalization, technology, and sustainable design and adaptive reuse in a scalable concept.

The Wind Tower 
In what the architect and interior designer call “a new icon,” the Wind Tower aims to achieve energy independence (even adding to the grid), create eco diversity (in layered vegetation and water catch-basins), and contributing culturally (the building facade is a chromatic clock).

Three areas mattered most to Richard Moreta, principal of his Miami practice, for architecture: photovoltaics, aeolic energy, and water retention. His search for aeolic (or wind) efficiency hinged on the Venturi phenomenon, essentially the acceleration of a mass of air between two volumes. As a result, what was originally set to be two buildings became one, to take full advantage of the effect.

The Wind Tower’s aerodynamic lines promote catching rain; the south facade is dedicated to solar-energy absorption; an e-glass (e for emissivity) facade helps stop the penetration of ultra-violet and infrared rays, aiming to curb heat gain/loss.

John Naranjo of MRA Design in Miami, who collaborated with Moreta on the project, traces concept inspiration and building shape to a tropical flower. “We approached it like nature; it maintains life through absorbing sun, water, and wind,” he says. “Predominant is the wind. Physically, we wanted to create aspects that are seen working. Guests will feel good about the experience.”

Says Naranjo, “You cannot have technological and radical innovation without thinking of sustainability. It pays off, but it’s going to cost more up front. Economically, I think it’s going to be the future.”

Extreme Birding 
With the tagline “It’s all about the view,” Extreme Birding promotes birdwatching as a concept that can be sensory and exciting—and perfect for anybody interested in a luxurious, natural retreat experience.

Morris Architects conjured two birding hotels, one on a coastal cliff in Alaska, the other in a forest canopy in Costa Rica, to test how a birding retreat translates for environmental extremes (the former cold and dry, the latter hot and humid). Viewports, patios, or treehouses offer supreme views; a “habitat merge” allows birds to circulate laterally and vertically throughout the hotels. Guests can track bird information and migratory patterns on their in-room, video touch-screen systems.

Morris Architects’ Oliver notes, “I like the subtlety of Extreme Birding. As a concept, it sneaks up on you. Something as passive as bird-watching, and almost banal, ends up being this exciting and engaging thing.”

www.radicalinnovationinhospitality.com 

http://www.hdmag.com/hospitalitydesign/content_display/projects/e3i0d287909ecf291eb1aa42ff1bfdd58c4

Vertical Farming

I am not liberal, but I do care about living well. That includes eating well and putting the best foot forward, la bella figura. The future of food and food systems can be downright scary. Are we eating the real things, or just what look like the real things? What you put into your body can potentially stay in there for a lifetime. Pesticides, genetically altered nutrients, chemicals…are we humans or are we lab rats? Do you really want to risk not knowing what you’re eating and waiting to see the effects unravel over the years and end up paying for it later? Think about it.

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source: verticalfarm.com

Advantages of Vertical Farming

	Year-round crop production; 1 indoor acre is equivalent to 4-6 outdoor acres or more, depending upon the crop (e.g., strawberries: 1 indoor acre = 30 outdoor acres)
	No weather-related crop failures due to droughts, floods, pests
	All VF food is grown organically: no herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers
	VF virtually eliminates agricultural runoff by recycling black water
	VF returns farmland to nature, restoring ecosystem functions and services
	VF greatly reduces the incidence of many infectious diseases that are acquired at the agricultural interface
	VF converts black and gray water into potable water by collecting the water of evapotranspiration
	VF adds energy back to the grid via methane generation from composting non-edible parts of plants and animals
	VF dramatically reduces fossil fuel use (no tractors, plows, shipping.)
	VF converts abandoned urban properties into food production centers
	VF creates sustainable environments for urban centers
	VF creates new employment opportunities
	We cannot go to the moon, Mars, or beyond without first learning to farm indoors on earth
	VF may prove to be useful for integrating into refugee camps
	VF offers the promise of measurable economic improvement for tropical and subtropical LDCs. If this should prove to be the case, then VF may be a catalyst in helping to reduce or even reverse the population growth of LDCs as they adopt urban agriculture as a strategy for sustainable food production.
	VF could reduce the incidence of armed conflict over natural resources, such as water and land for agriculture

The Future of Food

Source: National Geographic News

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/06/090630-farm-towers-locally-grown_2.html

 

Image courtesy Blake Kurasek, Vertical Farm Project

“New York-based Architect Blake Kurasek designed the Living Skyscraper while he was a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The concept places urban farms on the outer fringes of residential apartments. 

Some floors are enclosed for year-round production of greenhouse crops, while others include terraces for seasonal items such as orchards. The ground floor would contain a farmers’ market where residents could sell to one another and the general public. “

 

 

Illustration courtesy Eric Ellingsen and Dickson Despommier, Vertical Farm Project

“The Pyramid Farm may be one way to address the needs of a swelling population on a planet with finite farmland, according to designers Dickson Despommier at New York’s Columbia University and Eric Ellingsen of the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Design teams around the world have been rolling out concepts for futuristic skyscrapers that house farms instead of—or in addition to—people as a means of feeding city dwellers with locally-grown crops.”

 

High-Rise Farms: The Future of Food?

John Roach

for National Geographic News

June 30, 2009

Salads of the future may still be served in bowls, but their ingredients might be grown in skyscrapers.

That’s the hope of scientists and architects who are erecting a unique strategy to feed a swelling population on a planet with finite farmland. (Find out more aboutsustainable agriculture.)

“In another 40 years, there’ll be another three billion people. That’s the problem,” said Dickson Despommier, a professor of public health at Columbia University in New York. “We have to find another way to feed them.”

One solution, Despommier believes, is to grow everything from salad greens to staple grains year-round in high-rise buildings at the hearts of urban centers.

This so-called vertical farming could put food within easy reach for billions of people while reducing carbon emissions from shipping crops across continents and oceans, he notes.

(See pictures of glass pyramids, towers of greenhouse pods, and other possible designs for vertical farms.)

“[The concept] is based on technologies already in use throughout the world, mainly high-tech greenhouses,” Despommier said.

For example, many existing greenhouses use hydroponics, a technique for growing crops in smaller spaces using nutrient-enriched water instead of soil.

Energy Hogs?

But for now high-rise farming remains just an idea. One challenge is how to stack the greenhouses so that layers of crops get enough light to be grown in a vertical structure, Despommier notes.

That’s one of the reasons Bruce Bugbee, a crop physiologist at Utah State University in Logan, is critical of high-rise farming. He says the concept is too expensive to implement and would be a colossal waste of electricity.

“We’re talking gigawatts of power, just huge amounts of power [to grow crops indoors], compared to free sunlight outside,” he said.

Typical office light is only about one percent as intense as the full sunlight needed to grow crops, Bugbee notes.

“People get confused about the amount of light needed to get plant yield versus the amount of light needed to keep people happy and productive and healthy,” he said. “They are roughly a hundred-fold different.”

Despommier counters that architects are already designing buildings to harvest the maximum amount of natural light.

What’s more, by incorporating new energy sources such as hydrothermal and wind power, these buildings don’t necessarily have to look like typical skyscrapers.

Start Small

Another consideration is creating a vertical farm design that would be economically viable.

Despommier said he is particularly intrigued by Eco-Laboratory, created by Seattle, Washington-based architectural firm Weber Thompson.

Other proposed buildings, which can be solely farms or mixes of farms and houses, would reach up to 60 stories high.

But the Eco-Lab complex would be just 12 stories tall and would mix residences with gardens that produce food for the local neighborhood.

“This was [an] attempt at something that seemed viable to a developer,” said project designer Myer Harrell.

Residents might tend the crops and own equity in their production, or they might assign the work to outside agricultural firms and later purchase the crops at a local market.

Selling the housing at market rate and proceeds from the farmers’ market could generate significant funds.

For example, Harrell said, sales of tomatoes and lettuces grown in the high-rise’s hydroponic gardens could total about a million U.S. dollars a year, based on revenue minus the base production costs.

The market viability of Eco-Lab, Harrell noted, distinguishes it from taller vertical farm proposals.

“Those [designs] have merit, but it would be difficult for us to see this idea jump to a larger scale right away,” he said.

Harrell believes breaking ground on Eco-Laboratory or a similar scaled-down building could be feasible within the next few years. Even the burst housing bubble and global recession, he noted, may work to the concept’s advantage, as people become more interested in self-sufficiency such as growing their own food.

(Related video: “Urban Farming Blooms in London”.)

Go Veggie Instead?

The need for vertical farms is most urgent in Southeast Asian countries, Columbia University’s Despommier said. Many of those places have seen increasing crop failures due to extreme weather and disease amid surging population growth.

(Related: “Food of the Future to Be More Diverse?”)

Indoor farming eliminates vagaries of the weather, he said. And even if disease destroys a harvest, the next crop can be planted immediately.

Bugbee, the vertical farming critic, has another solution to feed Earth’s swelling population: Eat less meat. This would free up land currently grazed by livestock to be sown with food crops.

“That,” he said, “is a rock-solid principle if you are looking for a way to be environmentally responsible.”

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/06/090630-farm-towers-locally-grown_2.html

 

http://realestate.about.com/od/realestateinvesting/qt/urban_parkland.htm

Trend Toward More Urban Green Space and Real Estate Investing

Reduced Supply with Increased Demand is the Story in Many Areas

By James Kimmons, About.com

The news is full of stories of land conversions in urban areas. Old land fills, government facilities and other large tracts are desired by developers, but local government is increasingly grabbing it for the creation of green spaces, parks and other community use.

With environmental concerns growing, groups pushing for more green areas are growing as well. After all, who would argue with a new park near the city center, with trees, lakes and all those outdoor recreational activities we value? Perhaps a real estate developer would argue otherwise, but the pressures against them are huge.

The influence of “supply versus demand” is in play in these situations as regards real estate values. It’s more than just the fact that there is less land available on which to build.

• Values of property around these park areas will rise at an above normal pace.
• Improving the quality of life in an urban area can stimulate significant growth and yet more development.

Real estate investors will benefit by keeping abreast of these type of land conversions. It’s not about trying to buy into a quick profit, but more a long term approach to buying into area growth and appreciation.

http://realestate.about.com/od/realestateinvesting/qt/urban_parkland.htm

Water Droplet Resort

source: Inhabitat.com

http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/06/10/water-building-resort-will-convert-air-into-purified-water/#more-32838

Water Droplet Resort Will Convert Air Into Purified Water

by Alexandra Kain (June 10, 2009)

Architecturally and thematically designed in the shape of a drop of water, the Water Building Resort intends to become the first building ever to convert air into water with the help of solar power. What sounds like magic will be achieved with the following combination of nature and technology: A sunny, southerly facing facade made of photovoltaic glass will harness solar energy, allowing light to pass through. The northern facade features a latticed design for ventilation as well as unprecedented Teex Micron equipment that will convert humid air and condensation into pure drinking water.

 

Designed for construction in warm and humid coasts, the Water Building Resort, a resort complex, will also house a water treatment facility in the bottom floor, for purifying salty sea and rain water, along with a center of technological investigation to control and certify water quality. Restaurants, gyms, exhibition halls, hotel and conference rooms, and spa services will fill the upper floors – all based on the theme of water, the environment and renewable energy. An underwater aquarium will sit at the base of the Water Building Resort, rounding out the water conscious theme and practices.

The Fight To Outlast Your Neighbors

In other words, you’ll have less chances of dying from manmade and/or natural disasters before your time is up.

“We live in a closed biosphere, we only have one planet and we need it to live. Despite what commercials say, going green isn’t about buying the latest gadget or bamboo linens, it is about making choices that are sustainable. We need to reduce pollution, we are running out of clean drinkable water, our air is making us sicker and the amount of land where we can grow food is shrinking. We need to find new energy sources, oil or petoleum is highly polluting and will run out, before it does we will fight wars for control of it if we are still dependant on it. We need to conserve resources for 2 reasons, we rely on many of them to survive, like trees, not only for shelter, but to create oxygen, and the other is we are running out of places to bury the waste. We have new landfills being built every year and we are limited on where they can go. On the East coast where the population is more dense many states have 2 options, burn it and contribute to more air pollution or ship it to another state and pay a lot more for waste removal. 

Another area to consider is our food, more of it is manufactured instead of grown, all these empty calories are killing us. We have a huge increase in obesity and all the diseases that go with it. For the 1st time in history our children have a shorter life expectancy than we do. Not to mention the amount we waste and the worldwide impact of our eating habits, all the rain forest being clear cut to make way for our crops when we have the resources to grow the food here. I eat a local, organic diet to have a healthier more nutritious lifestyle, reduce the transportation effects of my food as well as support my local economy.”