Vertical Farming - Food Production will become part of daily urban Life

VERTICAL FARMING Food production will become part of daily urban life.

„We stand for food production in urban spaces which runs independently from fossil fuels. With the Vertical Farm we drastically reduce the use of resources and we implement energy loops. Organic, local produce have to be grown where the consumers are.

Food production will become part of the daily urban life again.“ :: vertical farm institute

„In conclusion, this exhaustive body of work presents the best view so far published on what the world would be like if alternative agricultural strategies were employed to feed some 9.6 billion people. In the opinion of this reviewer, it is a tour de force blueprint for how to proceed into the next millennium, enabling humans to finally achieve a peaceful co-existence with the rest of nature.“ Dickson Despommier, Prof.a.D. Columbia University, New York about the dissertation “up! Contribution of Vertical Farms to increase the overall Energy Efficiency of cities” by Daniel Podmirseg, head of

„Whether we want it or not, urbanisation is continuing to happen. By the middle of this century, nearly two thirds of human kind will live in cities.

The city of the future demands both food security and food of the best quality. Yield increase is currently only provided by increasing efficiency. But the world population is growing faster than the increase in productivity.

World agriculture will be confronted by big challenges, in the medium and long term.

In the future, traditional production methods will have to be supported by new agricultural technologies.

Vertical Farming offers a promising new approach to guaranteeing food security for cities. Food is produced directly next to the consumer- in the middle of the city.

Vertical Farming drastically reduces the required agricultural area and resources such as water, fertilisers and pesticides. Thus, it offers completely new opportunities for urban organic food production.

The Vertical Farm, conceived as a multifunctional building, offers new possibilities to combine food production with other functions such as living and working. It aims to bring the environment into the living room.

I am very pleased to hear about the activity of the vertical farm institute as well as about the open and broad discussion of this issue in Austria. I hope that this technology will be of great significance for the city of the future and that Austria will play a role in this.“ DI Dr. Franz Fischler, Präsident European Forum Alpbach

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THE NEXT AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION The city of the future is already being built.

There is a long tradition of food production in greenhouses. New technologies provide the opportunity to develop this kind of building type. The development of alternative cultivation methods, comparable to the invention of the elevator for skyscrapers, leads to a new building typology – the Vertical Farm.

Efficient building services combined with intelligent building forms make optimum use of sunlight and sun energy. Wind and solar power cover the biggest percentage of the energy demand. The Vertical Farm aspires to create a circular economy, consisting of closed energy and material loops.

Intensive food production in the middle of the city opens up opportunities for the economy, trade and public life. Healthy organic produce will be sold on newly created market areas – next to or in the Vertical Farm. Regional products will be available all year round. The Vertical Farm can therefore be seen as a magnet for relocating market- and trade spaces which are directly or indirectly connected to food production and food distribution within the city. The Vertical Farm – in the visual field of the urban population – embodies a closed production chain from cultivation to distribution. Food production will become part of daily urban life.

Vertical Farms have already been realized in numerous countries all around the globe. Technologies are therefore already in use, and their economic track records speak for themselves.

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VERTICAL FARM - ARABLE LAND OF THE 21st CENTURY VERTICAL FARMS LEAD TO • • • • • • • • •

Resilient cities New services Activation of public spaces for market, trade, gastronomy and leisure Transparency in food production Transparency in the food production chain Healthy, organic, locally produced food products Support for an energy optimized urban planning and urban energy design.

Technology- and innovation leadership and Strengthening of international competitiveness

COMPARED TO CONVENTIONAL AGRICULTURE, VERTICAL FARMING REDUCE • The overall energy consumption of the food sector • The cultivation area by more than fifty fold • Water consumption by up to 95% • Pesticide use by up to 99% • Fertilizer use by up to 90% • The dependency on food imports and their social, ecological and economic costs • The co2 footprint • Economic, social and health costs of food miles • The dependency on fossil fuels

Reduction of fertilizer use

Reduction of water use

Reduction of pesticide use 5

NEXT TO PEOPLE - IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CITY Multidisciplinary collaboration is needed to design and develop the city of the future. Now, this challenge can no longer remain the responsibility of only architects or urban planners. The growing world population means that we need to rethink cities from scratch. The agricultural area which supplies the city with food currently expands ten-fold compared to the newly built up area.

Food supply therefore has to shift to become the central focus of the city of the future. However, this can only be accomplished if we maintain a holistic and integral view. In addition to ecological, economic and social components, the spatial integration of Vertical Farms is influenced by the physiological and infrastructural requirements of plants. Different expert opinions therefore have to be considered.

What all experts have in common is their focus on finding answers to the following questions:

How do we want to live in the future? How do we guarantee attractive public spaces? How do we transform the modernistic city into a resilient city?

All research activities of the focus around food and energy production as well as questions on the sustainability of urban life. The sees the Vertical Farm as a building typology which is to be developed to cope with the huge challenges that will confront the global city in the 21st century.

Our collaboration with individuals and associations ensures early contacts and exchanges with stakeholders in different planning and implementation stages. We work closely with all who have a sustainable approach to rich, ecological food production. The human being stays at the centre of all processes.

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WE PRODUCE WHERE FOOD IS CONSUMED. For 11,000 years we have produced food exactly where it is consumed. With a short break from this practise. This break happened on a large scale around 60 years ago – with the green revolution. This led to huge impacts on energy consumption and land use. The consequences of the global food production network can be highlighted as being co-responsible for climate change, air pollution and remarkable geopolitical tensions.

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World population growth since the invention of agriculture

Food production within cities can ease this situation with the help of the implementation of Vertical Farms. Public spaces can be rethought, social interactions receive new relevance, local economic interdependencies can be redesigned – both on an economic and a spatial level. Organic, fresh and local produce will be distributed all around the urban area. Food production becomes part of daily urban life.

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1 m2 of a growing city requires an additional 10 m2 of agricultural land to supply city dwellers with food

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PRESERVING THE HOLISTIC VIEW We see the Vertical Farm as a structural element of the city. This new building typology has the potential to rearrange linear material- and energy flows into circulatory ones. This intrinsically leads to an increase in the resilience of urban centres.

The potential in energy production and in increasing energy efficiency must therefore be detected on multiple levels; they cannot be restricted to the building unit alone.

This potential can be unlocked by linking the Vertical Farm with the urban environment. Energy production makes use of renewable energy resources such as solar and wind energy, geothermal energy and ground water. Technologies can be adapted to use excess heat. It is possible to activate energetic synergy potentials of different building programmes. The typological concept of the Vertical Farm therefore offers ideal energetic potentials for a synergetic interrelationship between building entities within a city which aims to achieve a circular economy.

„Circular economy has becom the mantra of the EU.“ José Ruiz-Espí, European Commission, Directorate-General ‚Agriculture and Rural Development‘

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Vertikal Farm Market place City

The Vertical Farm is an important structural element of the city for closing material- and energy flows.

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M

FIRE WALL

VERTICAL FARMS IN HIGH-DENSITY AREAS Urban sprawl and the sealing of fertile ground not only put pressure on agriculture, but also on cities and countries. The growing dependency on food imports reduces the local political influence on cultivation methods and cultivated produce.

There seems to be a clear trend: Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of food production and the demand for local organic and sustainable production is growing.

Firewall – The Vertical Farm for Vienna. Technisches Museum Wien, Urban future, thinking forward © 2016

Hybrid building – The Vertical Farm for Innsbruck© 2016

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FEUERMAUER

hmax = BK IV 21,00 m

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POST OIL CITY AND ENERGY CONSUMPTION Since the industrial revolution, agriculture has changed from the bottom. The world population has increased five-fold within the last 100 years, whereas arable land has only been doubled. Even this ratio was only possible because energy subsidies in agricultural production have been augmented by more than 8,500 %, mostly retained from fossil fuels.

A third of the world’s energy consumption is directly related to the food sector. The Vertical Farm not only reduces energy use in food production, but also makes it possible to be independent from hydrocarbon energy. Additional energy for running the Vertical Farm can be provided by renewable energy.

ENERGY CONSUMPTION FOOD SECTOR

World energy use and the ratio related to the food sector

WORLD ENERGY PRODUCTION

Fore every calorie we consume we need ten calories of fossile energy to produce it. This is that what we‘re about to change.

The Vertical Farm is optimized on local climatic conditions and operates by using available renewable energy. The Vertical Farm stands for short traffic ways, embodies the whole food supply chain and aims to practically dissolve the food transport network.

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RETHINKING THE GROUND FROM THE BOTTOM Arable land for urban food supply is the currency of the 21st century. The ongoing losses of fertile arable land caused by conventional agriculture increase the pressure on the remaining soils and lead to an additional increase in energy subsidies.

This loss also increases the pressure on rain forests, which are exploited for agricultural production through slash-and-burn methods. It is not only in Europe that we are increasingly dependent on food production overseas, a development that also increases the use of environmentally harmful freight transport.

This diagram represents the land use per capita required to supply food all year round.

POTATOES

POULTRY

GRAIN

PIGS BEEF

OIL SEEDS SHEEP GOATS

SUGAR

MEAT OTHER MEAT FISH

FRUIT ANIMAL PRODUCTS

CROP PRODUCTS

FRESH DAIRY PRODUCTS

VEGETABLE Consumption in kg/a Required production area

OTHER DAIRY PRODUCTS

2.300 m2/year

The agricultural production area required by the urban population of Vienna corresponds to the Austrian state of Burgenland.

The ecological food footprint of the capital of Austria, related to the arable land, is five times higher than the needed cultivation area .

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Daniel Podmirseg

Head, scientific and art director

Stefan Parnreiter Mathys

Communication and management

Lucas Kulnig

Architect, concept developer and planner

Sebastian Sautter

Energy concepts and energy planner

Helmut Holleis

Architect and urbanist

Doris Steinacher

Construction management, project management

The is a diverse multidisciplinary team with specific expertise. It is embedded in an international research network centred on Vertical Farming. Architects, engineers, plant physiologists and artists cover a wide spectrum of knowledge – essential for developing and implementing new building typologies for Vertical Farms.

Our partners support the by providing unique knowledge of building and control systems, architecture and energy, biology and plant physiology, and energy production. It is only by combining customized architecture, urban planning, resource-conserving technologies and applied plant physiology that it becomes possible to reveal the potential of Vertical Farms, showing them to be an important part of sustainable food production with a promising future.

FOUNDING MEMBERS Helmut Holleis, Patrick Jaritz, Lucas Kulnig, Stefan Parnreiter Mathys, Daniel Podmirseg, Sebastian Sautter, Bernhard Sommer, Doris Steinacher.

Beirat: Prof. Anna Keutgen, Department für Nutzpflanzenwissenschaften, Universität für Bodenkultur Wien; Prof. Brian Cody, Institut für Gebäude und Energie, TU Graz

MEDIA PARTNER

Universität für Bodenkultur Department for plant sciences 14

SCIENTIFIC PARTNER

Graz University of Technology Institute for Buildings and Energy

SCIENTIFIC PARTNER

Vertical Farm Innsbruck

Vertical Farm Linz

Vertical Farm Vienna

Vertical Farm Graz

Research- and realization projects of Vertical Farms in Austria

We have big plans. And we know that it is important to extend our multidisciplinary network. For these reasons, we are looking for dedicated persons and partnerships. If you want to find out more, feel free to contact us. If you want to increase your activities in the area of CSR, we would be more than happy to work with you!

You can find more information about

at www.verticalfarminstitute.org

vertical farm institute WindmĂźhlgasse 9/23 1060 Vienna Tel: +43 (0)1 20 88 635 office@verticalfarminstitute.org www.verticalfarminstitute.org

Information brochure v 1.01. Grafics: Daniel Podmirseg, vfi.All rights reserved. Š 2016 vfi. Updated: Vienna, 18.08.2016