Comments on: ‘Plantagons’, New Vertical Farm Design, May Provide Produce for Future Cities

By: Cool Green Morning: Monday, February 13 | Cool Green Science: The Conservation Blog of The Nature Conservancy

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 15:00:54 +0000

[…] Urban farming goes vertical. (CleanTechnica) […]

By: Michael Ricciardi

Michael Ricciardi — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 23:02:43 +0000

These are all good and valid critiques (some I thought of as i was writing up the piece)…but man, does it look cool!…hmm?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 00:51:00 +0000

Consider the area of glass compared to the growing area. Large waste of material.

Rooftop greenhouses would be a more efficient use of materials.

Consider buildings constructed so that the rooftop growing space was the ideal size to keep a couple of gardeners busy. Perhaps a series of buildings of the same height with walkways connecting the greenhouses. What you don’t want is greenhouses so small that the gardeners spend a lot of time moving from site to site.

Build the greenhouses over office or residential buildings and you’ve got a built-in market for the produce.

Orient the buildings E/W and install solar panels along the south roof edge, just below greenhouse level, and the gardeners can also be the people who keep the solar panels clean and adjusted for solar season.

By: A Small Farmer

A Small Farmer — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 21:38:00 +0000

It’s an interesting design, but a few would have to be built and subjected to a trial, longer term, to see if it’s viable.

One of the BIG unmentioned drawbacks in this design, being that it’s in an enclosed space, with presumably, plants grown in close proximity, is the rapid spread of plant diseases or infections that could wipe out crops.

It can be an issue in plain ol’ greenhouses, and it usually means culling the one species, potentially, everything in the enclosed space, and the associated financial hit for the grower with a lost crop cycle.

Being that I haven’t grown large scale greenhouses, I don’t know how to comment properly on the “organic” name dropping done in the article, but… if you have a fungal or other very persistent infection invading a greenhouse, often the only way to remove it, without reinfecting the next generation of crop, is with fungicides and fumigation (most all of which would void organic certifications that take years to establish).

Sorry thought of another: Sunlight. Unless that whole corkscrew is slowly rotated through the daylight period, some of the corkscrew plane would be completely obscured from direct sunlight, by both the center support, and by being on the “north side” of the corkscrew plane.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 19:16:00 +0000

Even if we remove the “green” aspects of this. One of the arguements against the use of ethanol is that, as of now, it comes from food stuffs largely, which people argue increases the cost of food. Well, what happens when that 40 acre farm to grow some vegetables on cost 200 million to get up and running? How much will a dozen ears of corn cost then?

By: Bpl5019

Bpl5019 — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 04:18:00 +0000

This design would only provide benefits where light is either not the limiting factor in growth or where it can be supplemented by cheap electrical energy (cheap enough that it’s more cost effective to grow things in a mechanically complex structure rather than ship it from a field). I’m with Bob_Wallace on this one: try roof top and empty lot gardens and then consider this.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 21:07:00 +0000

Has anyone calculated the actual growing area compared to the footprint of this idea? Just looking at it, there doesn’t seem to be all that much gained. And at the cost of very involved structure.

Why not just do more traditional greenhouses on top of existing buildings? Parking garages would be ideal. Gardeners could drive to work.

You could use the extra heat to assist the building HVAC system rather than simply venting it off into the atmosphere as will have to be done with this glass sphere. And the building would add mass to store heat to help the rooftop plants make it through cold nights.

All of these vertical farms – I get the feeling that none of the designers have ever tried indoor/greenhouse gardening. Or contemplated spending ones working day on a slant.

Perhaps they should spend a shift in the Guggenheim…