1 minute read
ECOMUN
Introductory Studio G1
Metabolic Roofs
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Senior Faculty: Oriol Carrasco and Javier Peña
Small Group Project
Completed 2021
The goal of this proposal is to mitigate the ettects of current farming techniques. This idea can be achieved by lowering the carbon footprint and resource consumption needed to produce the most common fruits and vegetables in the typical Catalan diet.
Focussing on the consumption needs of the residents of Walden 7, a working mechanism is designed such that the waste from one (i.e. the people living in Walden 7) becomes the food for another (plants), which in turn becomes nutrition for the same community.
New technologies to be used to further optimize the harvesting of the fruits and vegetables on the planters.
This structure is a vertical hydroponic garden where plants begin at the top of the tower as seedlings and travel down the structure while they mature. These plants are eventually ready to harvest at the bottom of the tower. The towers revolve with the sun and have wind screens that protect the plants.
This roof addition creates a more sustainable diet for the local Spaniards by meeting 100% of Walden 7’s produce needs. This significantly reduces the community’s carbon footprint by bringing the vegetables to them and cutting down on food miles. The area of these towers is optimized by extending the growing space vertically with respect to sun and shade levels. The towers rotate in order to provide optimum sunlight and wind protection to the growing plants. These towers take up minimal floor space in order to utilize the remaining roof space for community activities that are often dominated and dictated by the produce that is grown in the towers.
The Vertical Harvesting towers act as growth tracking for a plant. The fruit or vegetable starts as a seedling at the top of the tower in an extending plant holder. In this position, the seedling recieves the most sunlight as it begins the growth process. The arms of the tower extend out and down to accomodate for the growth of the seedling as the plant matures.
Through the exploration of the food comsumption and food miles in Spain, a metabolic diagram is created with the methodology of improving the diet and avaliability of food for the Walden 7 residents.
