The world is seeing more and more eco-friendly architecture including skyscraping towers that are designed to sustain themselves. By using agricultural components and alternative energy systems these structures are built to feed and power their inhabitants and exist in harmony with surrounding ecosystems.
The London Farm Tower is designed to produce food. In Dubai the Matrix Gateway Complex is a self-sustaining and technologically innovative cube structure. In Detroit, the Motor City, there has been an economic decline of major proportions in recent years but a new self-sustaining urban farm is being planned to breathe life back into the city.The Bionic Arch designed by architect Vincent Callebaut for Taiwan is a mile high vertical farm. Vikas Pawar Designs is designing a set of Sustainable Twin Towers for northern India. And the list goes on.
The principles of Sustainitecture are:
- continuous, non-seasonal supply of agricultural products
- safeguarded agricultural production against the damage caused by natural disasters such as droughts, floods
- reconstruction of a balanced ecosystem through the reduction of cultivated land
- reduction in CO2 emissions by a reduction in the use of machinery that emits pollutants such as tractors and vehicles that transport goods for long distances
- reduction in water consumption
- decrease cost of food products
- social benefits such as creating new job opportunities
- meeting the requirements of the World Green Building Council
- determining which materials are best suited to the construction of sustainable architecture
- experimenting with innovative materials
London Farm Tower Architects and engineers are rising to these challenge by designing environments and structures that can sustain themselves in harsher environments and during crises. While the world has perhaps become more challenging humans are rising to the occasion through extraordinary creativity and imagination.