Showing posts tagged hydroponic
Agritecture Can Revitalize Industrial Brownfield Sites:
This next concept was the Holcim Awards “Next Generation” 1st prize winner. The project is aimed at the adaptive re-use of an industrial site for urban agriculture in Pretoria South Africa. The images for these are large so please click on them to get a better resolution. The detailing on the images are not to be missed so don’t forget to check out our high res image gallery.
Description of the project:
The Vertical Agriculture at the Old Pretoria West Power Station project transforms a soon to be decommissioned coal bunker of a power station into a vertical hydroponic garden, thereby inverting the attributes of a former polluting facility into a purifying element that continues to be a mechanism for supply of the city’s needs. Grey- and rain-water is used to grow food in close proximity to the urban consumer. Spin-offs become resources: gas and biomass for energy production in addition compost and clean water. To establish the necessary framework for the transposed use, the crude existing structure hosts bamboo construction, exploring its limits in multi-floor commercial application. Moreover qualitative spaces are created in the former barren area upgrading the built environment; the intended market at the base forms a place of social exchange. Urban agriculture knowledge is transferred to the local community and the adaptive reuse generates numerous products (food, compost, gas, clean water) and provides a strong return on investment.
What I like about this project is that it uses a brownfield industrial site and adds a light bamboo structure that produces food, supported by energy outputs from the factory attached. Building-integrated agriculture does not need to be vertical or overly complex, it can be composed of light materials like bamboo and can be free standing like the Spiral Garden or an attachment to an existing building like the Clepsydra Urban Farm. I admire the innovation of this project as it has a clear plan about how to improve the contribution and energy transfer of an old industrial site using Agritecture. This is a very smart project with many design elements to learn from. I highly recommend checking out the images and the site.
