Modern agriculture is a possible way to achieve sustainable food supply. With the process of urbanization, agriculture within city centres is becoming popular. Modern agriculture provides many solutions. For example combining agriculture with architecture. These methods have many advantages compared with traditional agriculture. The product is fresh and does not need a long time in transport, the culture methods are u and space efficient, and the plants could improve the comfort level of living.
There are many successful examples of agriculture-architecture combinations. One of the common methods is the outdoor culture of plants, in another word, a green wall. Outdoor culture is very efficient in solar energy utilisation. However, space limitation is the key factor to limit the application. Indoor or shaded areas cannot provide enough sunlight for plants, thus how to utilise the space in a shaded area is a problem we aim to solve.
One possible solution is to find plants that could grow in shade. Algae is a sort of unicellular organism which has a very high photosynthesis efficiency. Since the organism is fed by CO2 through photosynthesis, many studies have been carried out to achieve domestic culture of this organism. The culture media is well-understood and culture systems have been developed. The ingredients in the media contain vitamins, mental irons, and some basic nutrients, and culture jar and collum has been used in industry production. The product is rich in vitamins, lipids, and antibiotics, which could be a potential supplement producer. companies such as Alage2omega have worked on the supplement produced by this organism. Additionally, fungi are a group of organisms that could use organic compounds as carbon resources and grow without sunlight. Mushroom culture or medium fungi culture could produce protein and vitamin from food waste, potentially applicable in future meat substitution.
After the culture of food producer, including plants and microorganisms, there are organic waste from our system. To use materials efficiently, we also considered waste recycle system. One method has been used is from a company called Veolia. The system use anaerobic digestion to degrade organic pollution in waste and produced biogas and fertilisers. All of them could come back to heating and culturing process of plant. In a large scale , combination of these methods might build an effective and waste free home.
Reference
Indoor plant culture http://konodesigns.com/portfolio/Urban-Farm/
Algae culture http://www.algar2omega.co.uk
Wast recycle https://www.waterbriefing.org/home/technology-focus/item/14728-veolia-biogas-solutions-help-scottish-water-achieve-energy-self-sufficiency-at-seafield-wwtw