Integrated Vertical Farm

This proposal for a vertical farm in Chelsea, New York City integrates food growing, processing, and sales.

It expands the scope of the vertical farm concept beyond traditional hydroponic crops to include legumes and grains, demonstrating the potential breadth of vertical farming.

The food grown on the farm is processed through basic, intermediate, and final stages. An example is soybeans. Grown hydroponically, they are harvested when mature, hulled, ground, made into soymilk with a useable byproduct of okara, and finally the soymilk is made into tofu.

Raw produce is thereby converted into a broader range of downstream food products. Intermediate transportation of food is eliminated, reducing fossil fuel usage.

Formally the building is designed as an aggregated cell which is topologically continuous. Its apertures are manipulated according to program and site, with open framework cells used for farming and closed volumetric cells used for processing and retail.

OrganizationStudio 6, Professor Sulan KolatanLocationPratt InstituteDate2012