Vertical farms - the future of urban greenhouses

The landscapes of large cities are increasingly complemented by high-rise buildings, and the fashion for building skyscrapers has reached the conservative Scandinavia. For example, in the Swedish town of Linkoping, the construction of a very original building is planned. This unusual structure is a vertical greenhouse, which is designed to reduce the cost of delivering fresh vegetables and berries to urban consumers and provide residents with fresh products.

The building is a very unusual architectural hybrid of office space and a greenhouse. On the south side, where there is a maximum of light and heat, premises for growing vegetables will be located, and offices will be located in the shadow part of the building, occupying about 2/3 of the area. The project was named The world food building, and the construction of the building began in 2012. According to the authors of the project, this vertical greenhouse will be able to provide about 5,000 residents of the city with fresh products, producing more than 500 tons of healthy vegetables.

Plants are planned to be grown using hydroponics, in which all the elements necessary for growth and development will penetrate from the aqueous solution. To ensure the necessary climatic parameters in the greenhouses, computer equipment will be used, and at some stages of growing people, robotic systems will be replaced. The idea of city farming is not new, and similar concepts are being implemented around the world. The desire of food producers to become closer to consumers is quite natural, because during transportation the shelf life decreases, and hence the quality of the products. Therefore, modern companies are increasingly resorting to the construction of greenhouse complexes for the production of greens and vegetables directly in megacities, using abandoned production facilities for this. At the same time, there are not so many companies involved in vertical cultivation, and they work mainly in the United States. Such projects face a number of difficulties related to both financing and the search for innovative technical solutions, in particular, the selection of lighting. But despite this, the future lies with vertical farms, since it is precisely this format that saves the space that is so valuable in megalopolises.