The High Garden : An architectural exploration on how to integrate vertical farming and modular architecture inside city centres

Abstract: The state of the world is changing. By 2050, The earth’s population will increase by 3 billion and building sector is asked to construct 3 billion new housing units inside urban centres. Since one of the fundamental needs is food, agriculture sector also needs to adjust itself to this growing number of people. Nevertheless, in 2019, Agriculture used 50 per cent of all earth’s habitable land and experts estimate that we need 109 hectares more land to cultivate however this amount of habitable land is approximately the land which is represented by the country of Brazil and 20 per cent more. Moreover, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations states that water use grew twice as much as population increase and agriculture already is using approximately 70 per cent of the global freshwater. At this point, experts like Professor Dickinson Despommier suggests that the only way humanity can tackle its future food safety issues is to find ways to introduce vertical farming inside Urban centres. The High Garden project is resulted by the world state today and is trying to find an architectural solution to the mentioned issues. It starts firstly by studying the issues more thoroughly and then tries to form a framework which includes and transcends them. It studies how the construction sector is acting now and how it can reorient itself to the situation whilst limiting its negative environmental impact. Then the thesis tries to understand the basics of vertical farming methods compared to the conventional geoponics farming as it is practised today and how it can integrate the better cultivation solution inside city centres. The last step of the theoretical studies of the project is to look at the history of integrated farming and EcoArchitecture. After understanding the theories of the issue, then the thesis starts to form itself as an architectural intervention using the architectural tools and methods and combining the studied disciplines. The result of the thesis is a modular configuration which can accommodate various activities such as aeroponic farming, local markets, zen areas, and drone subscription deliveries etc. Because of the modular construction of the project, it can adapt and adjust itself to different situations and it uses an algorithmic tool to analyse and study existing cities to find proper intervention points. Then it is attached to the existing buildings as a sustainable green extension solving some issues and revitalizing the dead city edges. Keywords: State of the World, rapid urbanization, population growth, geoponic agriculture, Co2 emission, greenhouse gas emission, aeroponic farming, modular architecture, sustainable architecture, EcoArchitecture