BE Lab -Vertical Farming & Sustainable Systems Design

college of built environments' interdisciplinary design studio at the university of washington



Branden Born, Associate Professor of Urban Planning

Gundula Proksch, Assistant Professor of Architecture

Ken Yocom, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture






In the United States, it is estimated that about 30% of the agricultural output originates within or on the edges of metropolitan areas. In response, a field of research and practice has emerged that focuses on the productive effectiveness of urban agricultural practices locally, regionally, and globally. In fact, locally, Seattle just declared 2010 "The Year of Urban Agriculture."


Using multidisciplinary skills from both undergraduate and graduate levels, this BE Lab is building upon these urban initiatives and their interrelated goals by developing strategies for integrating agricultural practices into the built environment. In particular, into the sustainable design of a large urban site containing multi-story residential buildings. Working at multiple scales, we are examining and synthesizing the intersections between socially equitable urban agricultural strategies with "high tech"/state of the art sustainable building systems.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Mid Reviews 2/22/10

Everyone worked really hard and produced a lot of work for Monday's Review. Described as a "quantum leap" from where we were two weeks ago, our work described more detailed ideas about the systems operating in our projects and the forms they might take. With more research and gathered data we tried to quantify projected numbers for things like: Agriculture square footage, food production, job production, FAR and captured rain water.
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