TEAM T9 (Akanksha Bajaj & Anahat Chandra)
Keywords: Agricultural Shrinkage, Vertical farming, Communal, Bio-fuel generation
Our building responds to a future context, wherein several factors have led to the shrinkage of agricultural lands, in an urban metropolis, forcing us to accommodate farming in a more efficient and sustainable manner.
It is inspired from the agrarian history of Haryana, and aspires to generate employment for the rural population that will lose its livelihood in such an eventuality.It also hopes to increase community interaction; to counter the social isolation that is often faced by the users becauseof living and working in an urban metropolis. As a solution to this, we propose vertical community farming, which not only aides food production using minimal land, but also engages the users and facilitates interaction between them and the locals of Haryana as well. The building thus aims to manifest holistic sustainability – that is generate food as well as electricity from building waste using bio-fuel reactors, enabling self-sufficiency which is especially relevant in times like the present.
The vertical farm prototype is based around a capsule, which houses either the nutrient mist or water to grow the plants in, a lighting system the simulates sunlight, and a bio air filter that uses the air flow through the urban farm to purify air and circulate it via the building ventilation system.It employees technologies such as aeroponics and hydroponics to cultivate and produce plants. These technologies further guarantee minimal use of water and nutrients. These capsules are then arranged on a system of rails to maximize space and thus efficiency. The urban farm itself was imagined as a modern greenhouse that manifests itself as the focal feature of our building, present on each floor and visible from every point.
The form is designed such that it is staggered at each level, in order to provide areas for the community hubs and urban farms on each level. With an agendato deconstruct the typical notion of having public spaces at the lower levels and increasing the level of privacy as we went up, we tried to provide shared public spaces throughout the built form that connects our various programmatic elements. With the provision of community hubs, at intermediate levels spread throughout the building, we aim to engage the users in various community activities, since our concept hinges around fostering community interaction.