Tag Archives: city garden

This architecture-inspired vegetable cultivator was designed for city dwellers to farm at home!

Posted on by

Vegetment is a sustainable vegetable cultivator for city dwellers to have the means to all the perks of farming without the mess and bulk.

Adapting to tiny living spaces like compact city apartments means finding small-scale alternatives to our favorite large-scale pastimes. The ways we cook, clean, and store home goods inevitably change to fit comfortably within the small floor plan of efficiency studios and micro-apartments.

In crowded cities, vegetable cultivators provide all the perks of gardening without the mess and bulky appliances. Vegetment, a gardening appliance designed by Subin Cho, is a tiny-living solution for city dwellers to have access to a garden and fresh produce.

Inspired by the cogency of urban architecture, Cho downsized different aspects of city infrastructure and applied them to the design of Vegetment. Especially influenced by the open-air nature and voluminous space of verandas, Vegetment’s overall structure echos the look of deep outdoor deck spaces. Vertical by design, Vegetment appears like a micro-sized high-rise apartment complex, with each level leaving space for miniature gardens to grow and thrive.

Since city apartments aren’t well-suited for large gardens, Vegetment was conceptualized as a solution for city dwellers who’d still like to grow their own produce. Comprised of three tiers, Vegetment grows vegetables on its bottom two verandas. Taking cues from macro architectural concepts, a sliding louver system mimics the look of a sliding glass door and backdrops each veranda.

As Cho explains, the louver system, “opens and closes according to the flow of nature and adjusts sunlight and ventilation appropriately. It is automatically operated in a motorized manner according to the environment of the veranda (sunlight, temperature, wind) without any separate operation.”

In addition to the clever louver system, Cho design Vegetment with built-in solar panels for each garden to receive sunlight during the day and artificial light from LEDs at night. Then, a drain system brings water to the plants and a water reservoir where any excess water is stored. Owners of Vegetment also receive regular deliveries of seed pods, making gardening in the big city as easy as ever.

Designer: Subin Cho

The louver system mimics the movement and appeal of sliding glass doors. 

When sunlight is provided, the louver system automatically opens for the plants to receive light.

The post This architecture-inspired vegetable cultivator was designed for city dwellers to farm at home! first appeared on Yanko Design.

This hanging wire shelving is designed to showcase each plants individuality and unique purpose!

Posted on by

REN is a flagship plant store committed to revitalizing dying plants and showcasing each plant for its individuality and unique needs.

Whenever we want to bring some life to our rooms, filling them up with mini indoor gardens usually does the trick. However, taking care of plants comes with its own list of challenges–keeping tabs on the amount of sunlight and water required for certain plants to thrive can get overwhelming. Sooner than we know it, our favorite plants are dying and we’re back at square one. In Mita, Tokyo, social advocacy design studio Nosigner opened REN, a flagship ornamental plant store whose aim is to bring life back to dying plants.

Under close leadership from Nobuaki Kawarhara, fourth-generation Tokyo Ikebana, REN is operated by a team of plant caretakers who specialize in the Japanese art of Ikebana, or the art of flower arrangement. Considering the launch of REN, Nosigner suggests that our love for ornamental plants dates back to our primitive memories of living in forests. Once towns and cities became popularized in the 19th-century, our close proximity to forests and plant life to replaced with city infrastructure and paved roads. Since then, we’ve been craving the presence of greenery in our rooms and day-to-day lives.

REN is a flagship store focused on revitalizing our relationship to plants, noting that, “Ornamental plants brought in to create a pseudo-natural atmosphere in indoor spaces are not adapted to the environment and are therefore weak and often die. While we need ornamental plants, we also have a distorted relationship with them as part of our ecosystem.”

In designing REN’s interior space, Nosigner aimed to look at the room as a single vase to accentuate the beauty of each plant. Swapping out the number of plants for quality, Nosigner built a moveable wire shelf that weaves throughout the entire store, providing individual shelves where each plant is showcased for its vitality and unique personality.

Designer: NOSIGNER

These bee-friendly living roofs on the Leicester city bus stops is part of their goal to become carbon-neutral by 2030!

Posted on by

Everything from honey bee colonies to honey production is on the decline. Even walking down the street, the bees crawling on the sidewalks seem to look weaker and weaker as the days get hotter and pollution only increases. Air pollution, drought, pesticides, and global warming all contribute to the overall decline in bee populations across the world. Doing something about it, city officials of Leicester, United Kingdom have installed green roofs on top of their bus stops called Living Roofs or Bee Bus Stops to attract pollinators like bees and to make the city a little greener.

The bee roofs will cover thirty bus stops around the city of Leicester with a mix of wildflowers and sedum plants, luring in pollinators like butterflies and honey bees. Conceived as a mode of climate resilience, the Bee Bus Stops will help bring in more biodiversity into an otherwise declining cityscape and absorb rainwater that falls on the roof to produce a natural, blooming garden atop each roof. In cities across the globe, concrete can get monotonous. Integrating natural gardens into the city fabric will help break up that monotony with some greenery, birds, and insects. Introducing Bee Bus Stops to the city of Leicester will also help mitigate the effects of urban heat islands by absorbing some of the heat during the summer months, collecting air pollutants in the process.

Built on a ten-year contract with Leicester’s city council and Clear Channel UK, the Bee Bus Stops will feature solar panels once the city has the means to attach them to every bus stop for green energy and smart lighting. Leicester’s deputy city mayor councilor Adam Clarke leads the city’s environment and transportation initiatives. On the city’s future goals of reaching carbon neutrality by 2030, Clarke explains the potential of the Living Roofs to bring them there,

“The new, modern shelters will be great for passengers and the mix of solar power and living roofs is another step forward for our ambition to be a carbon-neutral and climate-adapted city by 2030. The new shelters will also be a perfect complement to our work to deliver a new, carbon-neutral bus station at St. Margaret’s.”

Designer: Leicester City Council

Thirty bus stops across the city of Leicester have tacked on wooden boxes to their roofs, attracting pollinators like butterflies and honey bees.

Leicester’s Living Roofs mark the beginning of the city’s green initiative to become carbon-neutral by 2030.

This botanical garden’s petal-inspired, hexagonal-laced glass roof brings biodiversity to the city!

Posted on by

Botanical gardens in big cities always seem to help take us out of the monotonous droll of city living, weaving us through walks of native plant life and educational tours that teach us about plant cultivation and preservation. Bringing a touch of green to Magok, South Korea, Seoul Botanic Garden was designed and built to create an educational and public space that harbors flora and cultural insight from twelve tropic and Mediterranean cities across the globe.

Positioned on the southwestern side of the Han River in the Magok neighborhood of Seoul, the new botanic garden’s location was chosen partly due to the region’s pastoral history. Blossoming a safe distance away from the surrounding marshlands, Seoul Botanic Garden’s rippled, concave roof emulates the formation of a flower’s petals, particularly mimicking the shape of a Rose of Sharon’s petal bed. The 100-m wide concave dish acts as the structure’s roof, shelters the park’s guests, and by resembling the structure of a plant’s petal bed, offers a visually enhanced experience alongside the blooming plant life indoors.

Typically, the roof of a greenhouse takes the form of a convex dome, the roof’s pitch being the highest point inside the structure. However, the delicate rim of Seoul Botanic Garden’s hexagon-laced glass roof remains higher than its indented central point. Inside the greenhouse, plant life from 12 major cities across the globe, including Athens, Greece, and São Paulo, Brazil burst from every sunspot inside the disc-shaped indoor garden. Celebrated as South Korea’s first botanic park built inside a city, Seoul Botanic Garden traverses 500,000 square meters of land, comprising a greenhouse, forest, lake, and wetland.

Designer: Samoo Architects & Engineers

Garbed with a concave roof that mimics a flower’s petal bed, Seoul Botanic Garden uses the roof’s resemblance with nature to evoke a 3D experience for the garden’s guests.

A diamond-dotted skirt wraps the sides of Seoul Botanic Garden to reference the traditional facades found on greenhouses.

Inside, plant life busts at the greenhouse’s seams, covering flora from twelve major cities across the globe, primarily taken from tropical and Mediterranean climates.

Pools of water punctuate the floors of Seoul Botanic Garden, expanding the center’s overall biodiversity.

Inside, sinuous interior design harkens back to the structure of plants.

From an aerial perspective, Seoul Botanic Garden holds an impressive, closed roof that echos the shape of hibiscus flowers native to the country.

This smart indoor gardening system uses an automated irrigation system to take care of your plants!

Posted on by

If we learned one thing during quarantine, it was to not underestimate the power of plants. Bedrooms and workspaces alike seem to open up once we incorporate some greenery into the mix. Due to tight corners and lack of natural sunlight, city apartments don’t tend to plants too well. To provide a modular, compact gardening system fit for city living, Elif Bulut created Loop, a smart plant pot that takes care of your greenery while you’re away.

Loop is a smart planting system that feeds and tends to your plants while you’re away through an automated irrigation system. The agriculture system is shaped like a plume, flowering from the top and the bottom, keeping the seed modules in a radial row to form a skirt. Each seed module is detachable and securely locks onto one another through junction sockets, forming a link. Along the underbridge of the system’s lid, LEDs disperse light over the plants, adjusting their levels according to the time of day.

Users simply add seeds to the modules, position the modules to match up with the irrigation system, lock the top water reservoir into place, then watch as the water drips and the plants grow. Loop’s top lid links the system’s base with its irrigation pool so that users can also adjust the amount of water that flows into each module, ranging from sparse or open flow to frequent irrigation. Once the irrigation measure is settled on, the system’s integrated smart technology tends to each plant and keeps track of their condition to achieve optimal indoor settings. Loop provides a way for those who live in the city to still have access to gardening and all of the perks that come with it.

Designer: Elif Bulut

Shaped like a double-sided trumpet, Loop takes the familiar shape of many modern-day home appliances.

Equipped with plant modules and an automated irrigation system, Loop is designed for easy operation.

Loop comes with an integrated LED light system that nourishes plants with energy.

The brightness of the LED lights change according to the time of day.

Loop’s irrigation system allows users to adjust the drip between sparse and frequent amounts.

The modules lock into place with the irrigation system’s faucets.

Each plant module forms the system’s skirt by linking up at junction points.

This vertical farming system was designed to build up community and accommodate the urban lifestyle!

Posted on by

Urban farming takes different shapes in different cities. Some cities can accommodate thriving backyard gardens for produce, some take to hydroponics for growing plants, and then some might keep their gardens on rooftops. In Malmö, small-scale farming initiatives are growing in size and Jacob Alm Andersson has designed his own vertical farming system called Nivå, directly inspired by his community and the local narratives of Malmö’s urban farmers.

Through interviews, Andersson learned that most farmers in Malmö began farming after feeling inspired by their neighbors, who also grew their own produce. Noticing the cyclical nature of community farming, Andersson set out to create a more focused space where that cyclical inspiration could flourish and where younger generations could learn about city farming along with the importance of sustainability.

Speaking more to this, Andersson notes, “People need to feel able and motivated to grow food. A communal solution where neighbors can share ideas, inspire and help one another is one way to introduce spaces that will create long-lasting motivation to grow food.”

Since most cities have limited space available, Andersson had to get creative in designing his small-scale urban farming system in Malmö. He found that for an urban farm to be successful in Malmö, the design had to be adaptable and operable on a vertical plane– it all came down to the build of Nivå.

Inspired by the local architecture of Malmö, Andersson constructed each system by stacking steel beams together to create shelves and then reinforced those with wooden beams, providing plenty of stability. Deciding against the use of screws, Nivå’s deep, heat-treated pine planters latch onto the steel beams using a hook and latch method. Ultimately, Nivå’s final form is a type of urban farming workstation, even including a center workbench ideal for activities like chopping produce or pruning crops.

Designer: Jacob Alm Andersson

Following interviews with local residents, Andersson set out to create a farming system that works for the city’s green-thumb community.

Taking inspiration from community gardens and the local residents’ needs, Andersson found communal inspiration in Malmö.

Backyard and patio gardens are popular options for those living in cities who’d still like to have their very own gardening space.

Noticing the cyclical nature of community farms, Andersson knew that would be the crux of his design.

Following multiple ideations, Nivå ultimately assumes the form of a farming workstation.

Deep, voluminous soil pots provide plenty of room for growth and the high shelves allow vertical growing methods to persist.

Circling back to the community’s initial narrative, Nivå is a farming workstation solution that allows communities’ residents to farm together.