FLOATING FARM

Studio Theodore Spyropoulos

Tutors Mostafa El-Sayed, Apostolos Despotidis, Aleksandar Bursac

Team Dingyu Hu, Gaojia Chen, Siyuan Wang, Yuxiao Ren

Problems such as global warming, air pollution and depleted oil stocks have created an urgent need to produce clean energy. The current global food distribution model is always limited by the distribution based on economy rather than population, while it cannot cope well with natural disasters. To improve energy and food distribution conditions, we propose an alternative model of agriculture, which is an urban resource production and distribution system based on air. As an urban energy and food supplementary facility, it focuses on energy sustainability, mass production, autonomous distribution, and other aspects to meet the constantly changing needs of urban and rural areas.

Our research studies strategies of control and distribution, such as the cloud formation mechanism that is used to control the distribution parameters of wind- and water-harvesting units. These materials will be used for on-demand growth and delivery of crops by considering the populations’ real-time needs. The Floating Farm operates by using agent algorithms and crowd feedback data to make behavioural iterations and deployment decisions.

The Floating Farm consists of inflated units that are self-sustainable by using passive strategies of harvesting water, solar and wind energy, managing automatic planting and harvesting, and controlling the microclimate. The project aims for a circular model of farming and intelligent ecological thinking.

By taking London as the site of our experiment, we collect data and analyse the specific design parameters that should be taken into consideration during the integration of the Floating Farm into the existing urban fabric. Floating Farm’s ambition is to strengthen urban resource system and to create new forms of spatial organisation.