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Surface temperatures in Iran's Dasht-e Lut desert can climb to a lethal 159°F. Regardless, for hundreds of years before electricity, ice was manufactured there using highly efficient mud brick structures called yakhchāls. Scientific principles of convection, evaporation, and radiative cooling were harnessed by Iranian architects to realize the impossible. Broad sheets of desert ice forming by night in shallow, shaded pools - clever, wonderful and surprising.
Likewise wonderful is the newly constructed Vertical Harvest growing facility in Westbrook, which is due to begin large-scale production of salad greens this autumn -- about 6,850 pounds per day. With an urban footprint of just one-half of an acre, this automated farm can produce a yield equivalent of 250 rural acres of the same crop. It can sustain this production in all weathers and seasons, day or night. Vertical Harvest's 1:500 spatial leverage is a result of the intensive stacks of moving modular trays inside a building designed exactly for this purpose, in which water, nutrients, light and temperature are controlled with strict precision.
In short, the mysterious new building in Westbrook is a sealed clockwork for economical agriculture, a brilliant architectural reply to the pressing problem of food security. Every cubic foot within has been activated: The interior is a study in coordinated, synchronized systems that move "product" (assorted salad greens destined for regional supermarkets and schools) through the closely-monitored stages of planting, germination, feeding, maturation, harvest, packaging and loading onto trucks for distribution throughout Portland, the state and New England. As a purpose-built structure designed for controlled-environment agriculture, there are few adequate comparisons. Is it a machine? An ecosystem? A farm? A laboratory? A factory? The best answer appears to be "All of the above."
Here is a building that borrows every mechanical system, bends every known technology, enlists every proven urban farming method, in order to solve a very simple problem: Affordable and sustainable access to fresh and healthy greens year-round in a variable New England climate. When the countless racks of pinkish LED grow lights are at work, the upper levels of the building resemble a nightclub for silently dancing lettuce.
The dance itself, activated by the slow, steady progress of grow trays up and down and around the building, is choreographed with a refinement that would be unmanageable in an open field. Since every aspect of the plants' life cycle is controlled and measured, each input (humidity, seed density, nutrients, light, etc.) may be weighed against the final yield in ounces of leafy greens. At any given moment there might be more than 40,000 modular growing trays in simultaneous motion through this building, each of which has a number which may be scanned and tracked throughout its journey through the farm.
In this way, a data farm operates alongside the living one, generating statistics that illuminate patterns, allowing the system to continuously adjust variables for best results. When a particular tray is harvested and its yield is weighed, its biography has been recorded and analyzed. Here is a building assigned to do a difficult job (producing fresh food) while learning from its own mistakes, recording its successes and failures, and evolving. The power and seduction of this model for architecture as a whole is, for this critic, nearly unbearable.
If a second grade schoolroom, for instance, were similarly equipped to monitor its own essential variables, we might learn how ventilation, light, readings, recess, desk arrangements, and a lunch menu collide and contribute to students' recollection of important ideas. Patterns invisible to the naked eye would naturally emerge, and how unexpected might these be! Who knew that circles are better than rows, that two hours of free play is best for algebra, that French fries lead to sleep, or that large globs of raw Play-doh promote social harmony? What could be learned about a hospital? Or a prison? Or the Bureau of Motor Vehicles? But the advantages of these utopian fantasies being so obvious, it becomes quite painful to imagine any further.
Let it simply be noted that the newly-completed Vertical Harvest facility in Westbrook delivers a self-monitoring, self-adjusting system dedicated to the growing challenge of food security. I believe it is this core purpose that leads the building's architect, Nona Yehia, to call it "critical civic infrastructure." Infrastructure is a term not often linked with new buildings created by for-profit developers, since it makes a person think more of bridges, drinking water treatment plants or traffic lights. These are shared systems we rely upon, often without noticing them, for the smooth and safe daily conduct of our lives. Why would a private company want to contribute to something as boring and benevolent as that?
Yehia, who is also the CEO of Vertical Harvest, sees no conflict between private enterprise and civic infrastructure. She speaks convincingly of architecture's power to confront, explore, and solve difficult problems - such as equitable access to food and jobs, concerns central to the mission of her company. It pursues this mission with a hyper-rational design (meticulously integrated mechanical systems around which the building was modeled) and an enlightened workforce ethic (prioritized recruitment of people with disabilities and underserved communities). Architects, she said, are trained to find solutions where they are not expected by looking carefully, studying the problem clinically, and being ready to abandon ordinary ways of thinking.
Architectural design is defined, in Yehia's view, as high-impact problem solving in support of better environmental health. It is unusual, in my experience, to find an architect willing to be so bold. This is probably because so few architects bother to think in terms of shared civic challenges and, as a result, precious few buildings have the faintest chance of passing Yehia's "high-impact" litmus test. Previously in these pages I have examined the hazards of designing from the outside-in, as well as the poetic and economical results of designing from the inside-out.
The Vertical Harvest plant in Westbrook demonstrates the virtues of this second, and clearly superior, approach to architectural design. It sits with handsome confidence on a prominent intersection, an extroverted newcomer speaking in polite and respectful ways to its neighbors: stepping down large volumes as it recedes towards smaller-scale buildings on Mechanic Street, shifting from glass to wood and masonry in harmony with its surroundings near points of contact. Though the facility is largely off limits to the public due to food safety concerns, the building is transparent so that the processes may be seen and appreciated from the street. In the ground floor foyer a bright dedicated space is reserved for visitors who may learn about the growing process, peek inside sealed work spaces, and sample newly-grown produce.
This ambitious, state-of-the art structure is likely to demonstrate the positive potential of automated vertical farming as a national model. Without remote rural production, distribution to urban consumers is easy. Without soil, pesticides aren't needed. Without dependence on weather or sunlight, continuous and predictable yields are assured. Still, a model this ambitious and energy-intensive is not without risks and drawbacks. Energy costs are high and volatile, and Americans continue to meet urban farming with a kind of skeptical nostalgia. Don't farmers drive tractors and anchor their rural communities? Vertical farming is a young enterprise dependent upon many vital factors beyond its control.
Despite the headwinds, let's hope it succeeds and proves its thesis. Efficient, consistent, simple, consequential, fruitful; it is a glowing oasis in the food desert, a revolutionary system tuned to the challenges of the moment, and an experiment which deserves to become a standard.