In Newark, New Jersey, a large and deceptively nondescript building is redefining the Garden State, producing millions of pounds of food per year just outside of Manhattan. This 70,000 square foot facility has the equivalent yield of over 5 million square feet of traditional farmland. Inside, a year-round, closed-loop aeroponics system employs no pesticides and requires 95% less water than field farming. This branch of AeroFarms is not alone — it’s part of a food production revolution with projects ranging from at-home and in-store micro-farms to massive facilities set up in old factories and warehouses around the world.

Technically, vertical farming can be done outside, too, by stacking planters in natural sunlight, but indoor vertical farms offer a range of advantages. Inside, there are no seasons and specialized LED lights make it possible to grow plants continuously and cycle through various crops more easily. The controlled environment and standardization of these systems also makes automation easier. In Japan, approaches have gone predictably high-tech, with endeavors like the Vegetable Factory, which is operated entirely by robots.

Spatial containment makes recycling more efficient, mitigates spoilage and reduces the risk of diseases and pests spreading beyond a specific facility. Transportation costs and energy requirements are also reduced for farms that move into old factories and warehouses right in and around cities, putting them closer to consumers. Aeroponics in general also require less material input — mainly mist and air with minimal water and soil — leading to a lighter footprint.

What started in large and independent facilities has begun to spread into mainstream grocery stores and supermarkets, too. A few years back, Target started testing direct retail micro-farms, beginning with leafy greens before moving to tomatoes, peppers and more. Since these kinds of retail spaces are climate-controlled already for the sake of both shoppers and products, less added energy is required to maintain ideal conditions.

In Berlin, a company called INFARM recently partnered with local shops to provide similar in-store services, cutting down on farm-to-table distance right in the heart of a major European metropolis. Meanwhile, in Tokyo, vertical creepers, rice paddies and broccoli fields were integrated into the design of an otherwise Modern-looking office building, brightening up the place while also providing food for the employee cafeteria.

Taking vertical integration a step further, projects like the ReGen Villages aim to incorporate stacked farms directly into residential communities. It may sound impractical or even Utopian, but at its root the idea is relatively traditional: backyard gardens and community gardening are nothing new. Coupled with walkability and density, these kinds of green-centric towns have a lot in common with New Urbanist ideas that go back decades.

Still, it is generally wise to maintain a healthy skepticism when it comes to fresh green architectural trends and technologies and eye-catching renderings. Skyscrapers covered in greenery (or treescrapers), for instance, have proven to be popular but also problematic in practice (catchy conceptual earthscrapers, groundscrapers and sidescrapers, too, for that matter). Sometimes, more practical organic solutions are hiding in plain sight. Take wood, for instance, a historically popular green building material now finding new forms and reaching new heights in tall buildings around the world. Newer is not always better.

Some extreme vertical farming ideas may indeed prove to be far-fetched and unsustainable, but market movements suggest there is a future in these kinds of facilities and approaches. Investors are putting their money where people’s mouths are, buying up disused urban real estate and developing new indoor farming technologies. Already, vertical farming is a $2,000,000,000 industry and experts project it will grow as much as 30% per year over the next decade.

Vertical farms are of course not a complete solution to ongoing threats like climate change and mounting global food crises, but they do show promise — these endeavors are slowly breaking down urban and rural barriers, reconnecting cities with the food sources that sustain them and shortening that critical distance from farm to table.

Designed to float down the Danube river in Europe, the Eco Barge is a solar-powered floating greenhouse illustrating the possibilities of offshoring urban food production.

In addition to growing usable organic produce on the water, the barge has educational components, aiming to host presentations and workshops for citizens of European cities along the river, starting in Belgrade. Growing on the water allows food production to remain local without taking up valuable urban land.

An indoor office and presentation space brackets one end of the barge while the greenhouse is situated at the other, an open space with solar panels sitting in between. Sun and wind power systems generate renewable energy used to power the vessel as well as its on-board irrigation system.

Salt & Water, the architectural and yacht design firm behind the Eco Barge, are known for their floating projects, including a floating hotel concept made up of private yachts. These independent boats share common docks and community spaces, but can detach for explorations as well.

Responding to the movements of visitors passing through the space, this immersive work of installation art puts you in a private bubble in the midst of dense hanging garden – except this remarkable bubble that moves with you.

The Floating Flower Garden by TeamLab, a Japanese art collective, is on display in Tokyo, having been extended due to popular demand. Suspended from above, the plants are pulled up or dropped down to both envelop visitors but also given them hemispheres of personal space amid the floating foliage.

The idea is to make each guest part of the installation, allowing them to separate from friends and experience it alone or to move in groups and see how the computer system responds in realtime.

Meanwhile, the digital setup is not the only piece that changes things over time: “these flowers are alive and growing with each passing day. Each flower has a partner insect and the scent of the flowers becomes stronger at the time that the insect is most active, as a result the scent of the air in the garden space changes according to the time of day, morning, noon, and evening.”

TeamLab believes technology elevates art, but their work also places into pre-modern knowledge and ancient ideas of spatial awareness originating in Japanese philosophy and religion, including Zen gardens. More from the artists: “When a viewer gets close to this flower-filled space, the flowers close to the viewer rise upwards all at once, creating a hemispherical space with the viewer at its center.”

“In other words, although the whole space is filled with flowers, a hemispherical space is constantly being created with the viewer at its center and the viewer is free to move around wherever they want. If many viewers get close to one another, the dome spaces link up to form one single space. In this interactive floating flower garden viewers are immersed in flowers, and become completely one with the garden itself.”

Boldly curved and cantilevered into midair, these plant-wrapped stairs are designed to provide more than just a means of moving from one floor to another.

Stepping onto them takes occupants temporarily away from concrete floors and columns, then into and through a unique miniature ecosystem of warm and living materials.

This staircase by Paul Cocksedge for the Ampersand building in London is punctuated by platforms overlooking a central atrium.

These circular areas act as impromptu self-contained break and gathering spaces removed from the bustle of each main office floor.

Standing out not just physically but also materially, the lively-grained wooden curves are bedecked with thin stem-like strands of white metal. In turn, these support planters that supplant the role of traditional hand rails while still providing physical and psychological safety and support.

Each set of stairs is supported by the floors themselves, thus rendered structurally independent of a more ordinary central-column approach.

Further interactivity is woven into the biological side of the design in the form of herbs that employees can nurture, grow and ultimately pluck from the rails, facilitating a sort of in-office garden and adding a bit of mint to their tea or spice to their lunch.

Imagine creating amazing street art murals, graphics or graffiti tags anywhere you wanted and in a completely legal why. Now imagine getting paid for it. Well, one featured Web Urbanist street artist group does exactly that. The urban artists of Symbolix selectively clean the uban environment, leaving behind slogans, words and images of major companies and product releases. This group has managed to turn a street art hobby into a guerilla marketing campaign strategy.

(Check out our complete collection of 100+ Works of Creative and Geeky Art and Graffiti.)

The above murals are excellent examples, similar to those shown in the prior Web Urbanist post, of selective cleaning as urban street art. They show the range of possibilities, from typical tags to complex social messages. All of these are, of course, completely legal – reverse graffiti that boggles the authorities.

It is truly remarkable how the Stashpoint slogan stands out against the dirt and grime of the urban subway system. It is easy to imagine how a company would recognize the value of such a guerilla marketing campaign: these images are far more compelling than a typical framed advertisement in public.

This Big Brother guerilla marketing campaign is similarly prominent. In particular, in the left image, this branded image of an eye truly stands out from its surroundings. In fact, at least in the photograph, the image seems to stand out more than the sign it is written on.

This campaign for Hype really demonstrates the variety of possibilities inherent in reverse street art guerilla marketing. Simply by removing a layer of posters, for example, the letters clearly stand out in the left image – as if they were creatively drawn on. On the right, the potentials of erasure on different media are revealed. Together, even this simple repeated word takes on new life in relationship to various backdrops and settings.