STACKED: The building design, systems engineering and performance analysis of plant factories for urban food production

Expanding cities across the world rely increasingly on the global food network, but should they? Population growth, urbanisation and climate change place pressure on this network, bringing its resilience into question. For decades urban agriculture has been discussed in popular media and academia as a potential solution to improve food security,...

Towards Fossil Free Cities—A Supermarket, Greenhouse & Dwelling Integrated Energy System as an Alternative to District Heating: Amsterdam Case Study

The municipality of Amsterdam has set stringent carbon emission reduction targets: 55% by 2030 and 95% by 2050 for the entire metropolitan area. One of the key strategies to achieve these goals entails a disconnection of all households from the natural gas supply by 2040 and connecting them to the existing city-wide heat grid. This paper aims to...

Plant factories: Reducing energy demand at high internal heat loads through façade design

The increase in global food demand has led to the introduction of new food production systems. One key example is the plant factory. Plant factories face the same challenge as many high-tech building functions: high energy demands resulting from high internal heat loads. In this study we investigate how this energy demand can be reduced...

VERTICAL - The re-development of vacant urban structures into viable food production centres utilising agricultural production techniques

Problem definition and objective. Population growth and rapid urbanisation may result in a shortage of food supplies in the future. Existing high-rise buildings may offer opportunities for the solution of this problem. The objective of this study was to investigate aspects of the requirements, design and energetic performances in the re-...