NERDING: keeping climate change super cool

The origin of the common idiom, "The sky's the limit," is thought to come from Don Quixote. But I don't even think that OG D.Quix would be able to fathom the absurdly cool applicability of his statement to one of today's most high profile advancements in green architecture.



Looking at the current rate of expansion and population increase of us human-beans, it is estimated that by the year 2050, 80 percent of people, of which there will be 3 billion more, will live in urban centers. To match this demand for food while the land to grow it on becomes more scarce, it has been proposed that we mimic our urban progress by building farms up. Not only will this high-density solution provide sufficient space to supply a growing need, it will also allow for crops to be produced in a controlled environment at the source of demand, maximizing production while renewing and reusing resources, minimizing the cost of transport, and allowing for our natural spaces previously used for agriculture to recuperate.


The Vertical Farm was conceived by Dickson Despommier, a professor of public health at Columbia in 1999, and has grown from an imaginative but inconceivable solution, to a distinct developmental possibility. It's all over the webernets. Check it out.