An expansive master-planned complex to facilitate urban agriculture and private/public collaboration, The Agro Food Park is Denmark’s version of “Silicon Valley” for food research and development. From experimental greenhouses to vertical farm prototypes, the park is bringing together academics and businesses to work on creating a sustainable future via global food security.

Co-designed by an array of architecture, engineering, technology and agriculture firms, the food park was first opened in 2009 and already hosts nearly 100 companies in 44,000 square meters of space. The newly-expanded plan, however, will grow the park by 280,000 square meters over the coming decades, requiring careful strategic planning reflecting environmental considerations.

The long-term master plan features a communal Lawn showcasing experimental developments, a main-street Strip hosting various gathers and activities, and a series of Plazas to facilitate interactions between companies and researchers. The huge complex is also designed to recycle its own waste efficiently and minimize its footprint, a “practice what you preach” approach to ecological urban agriculture.

“Innovation occurs best when knowledge is concentrated in clusters and cross-pollinate. By linking food production to urban life, we have tried to create an environment where people, knowledge and ideas meet. The dream is to create the framework for agriculture’s answer to Silicon Valley.”

Though the plan is complex, the mission of the place is simple: to feed the world in a healthy way. The expressions of that mission, however, vary greatly, from initiatives to use clean energy and create biodiversity to facilitating healthy air and clean water. In short: it is not just about good food, but how best to produce edible goods in a sustainable way.

“Embracing Agro-Urban Ecosystem Design, the AFP treats urban and agricultural development together as a unified, productive and restorative ecosystem,” said the project architects.

“By integrating the carbon cycle and other ecological processes into large scale urban systems and their surroundings – buildings and energy flows, water cycles and wastewater treatment, land use and food production – the AFP creates economic value within the urban and agricultural infrastructure.”

As part of The Next Rembrandt, a multi-year collaborative project, a team of engineers trained a computer not only to understand the works of this famous Dutch master but also to expand his portfolio. Ultimately, the machine created a portrait that is at once brand new and yet also looks (and feels) like a lost original work of Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn.

An incredible combination of both machine learning and 3D printing, the project involved digitally tagging data in scanned versions of the artist’s various known pieces. Resulting patterns were subsequently explored by computers, including: brush strokes, approaches to organic detail and uncanny ability to depict human emotions.

The result is an algorithmic creation that mirrors the style of the master and depicts a Caucasian male in his thirties, with facial hair, black clothes, a white collar and a hat, facing to one side.

Humans input those general parameters, but did not have a say in the look or feel of the final print. A 3D texture was added to the work based on the height and depth of paint applied to Rembrandt’s actual works.

The two-year project was a collaboration between Microsoft, financial firm ING, Delft University of Technology and two Dutch art museums – Mauritshuis and Rembrandthuis. A public exhibition of the portrait is planned and details of the display will be released at a later date.

From the project creators: “It’s been almost four centuries since the world lost the talent of one its most influential classical painters, Rembrandt van Rijn. To bring him back, we distilled the artistic DNA from his work and used it to create The Next Rembrandt. We examined the entire collection of Rembrandt’s work, studying the contents of his paintings pixel by pixel. To get this data, we analyzed a broad range of materials like high resolution 3D scans and digital files, which were upscaled by deep learning algorithms to maximize resolution and quality. This extensive database was then used as the foundation for creating The Next Rembrandt.”