Urban farming, vertical forests and sky garden design concepts are currently seeing a huge amount of global attention. The reason being is that they offer to answer a huge question for most living in city spaces: How can we live a greener lifestyle in the city?
That question is answered through these incredible designs. Urban farming offers to cater to the food needs of cities in a way that is sustainable and doesn’t involve high levels of carbon emissions through transport processes, vertical forests add extensive green spaces in areas that are space short and sky gardens add a sense of community and a greener lifestyle to otherwise ‘brown’, boring living spaces.
However, due to the complexity of these incredible structures, in addition to the overall newness of the idea, a lot of these concepts never make it to the built stage.
But when they do, they really gain some attention.
One such concept that is currently in its construction stage is Italy’s Bosco Verticale. The incredible sustainable apartment building uses trees as built-in features, such as insulators and air filters, which helps greatly reduce its carbon footprint.
The latest concept of this nature to come out of the design stage and into solid ground is Sweden’s very own Plantagon Greenhouse. Designed by sustainable engineering and design firm Sweco, for the city of Linköping, this incredible structure will serve a number of functions.
First and foremost it will offer to act as a food production centre. The structure’s urban location will allow for freshly grown leafy green vegetables to be produced in close range to consumers, cutting carbon emissions caused by travel. In addition to the production of a sustainable vegetable supply, the greenhouse offers to act as a air filtration system, offer to filter contaminated air produced at nearby industrial areas.
In terms of the structure’s architectural form, a crystalline interior shell acts as highly sophisticated planter, with design enabling the sections holding organic growth complete access to light. The vegetation planted in the structure will be hardy and low maintenance, with food unfit for consumption processed to become biofuel - with aims to eventually create enough renewable energy to power the entire building.
This has been deemed as a project that will be the first of many, with the parent company aiming to create Plantagon Greenhouses worldwide. Further designs for these vary, with offering less function, both construction-wise and economically, than others.
With this project finally off the ground, sustainable building has taken another leap off of the page and into reality. The value, both environmentally and economically is tremendous and it is a positive sign to see increasing implementation worldwide.
