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Vertical farm

Pierre Sartoux’s “The Living Tower.” Source: verticalfarm.com.

Remember the Hanging Gardens of Babylon?
It was a little while ago - maybe you were filing your taxes or something at the time.

One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the gardens were supposedly built around 600 BC in what is modern-day Iraq by King Nebuchadnezzar II to provide a reminder to his wife, Amyitis of Media, of the green, rugged, and mountainous terrain of her homeland.
It must have been a respite from the arid, dry climate of Mesopotamia and a great use of urban space, and presumably, a source for locally-grown food.

The evocative image of the Hanging Gardens finds a high-tech, contemporary in the Vertical Farm Project, developed by Columbia university microbiologist Dickson Despommier.

Grow high

Prompted by a discussion on urban sustainability with his students, schemes focused on the same factors businesspeople face in planning their facilities in cities, namely, getting the most out of precious urban real estate by building higher and denser.

Learn more

The Vertical Farmer, Popular Science, July 2007

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