Blank, windowless exterior walls that get plenty of sun exposure could become vertical farms with the addition of recycled modular scaffolding. A project called GreenBelly aims to make use of these wasted urban spaces to provide fresh food to the surrounding neighborhood with a system that’s easy to transport, install and remove, and it doesn’t even require hookups to utilities. A six-level GreenBelly system made of reclaimed scaffolding and wooden pallets taking up just 35 square meters of land can produce over 14,000 pounds (6400kg) of vegetables per year.

The basic module contains a soil bed, two aeroponic towers and a hydroponic wall, capable of growing hundreds of plants at a time. Multiple modules fit together like Legos, stacking vertically to create multi-tiered open-air structures that harvest rainwater and run on solar energy. The bottom unit contains a farm stand for selling the produce to local residents, and the top level contains beehives to help pollinate the plants and produce honey. Producing and selling food in the same urban location allows the stand to sell fresh produce at fixed, affordable prices.

Created by AVL Studio, a design boutique specializing in sustainable architecture, the GreenBelly system could be run as an educational project by a school, an assistance program for homeless people or an addition to an existing restaurant or market, or its individual modules could be rented out to locals in a manner similar to community gardens. How it’s managed would likely depend on who owns the land it’s built on. The architects estimate the cost of a 20-module unit at about 30,000 euros (roughly $35,000 USD), which could be recouped after three years of operation.

It’s an interesting proposition for the many blind building facades found in an average city, especially in areas where fresh produce is harder to come by. AVL Studio envisions the GreenBelly system being especially valuable in disadvantaged neighborhoods. They’re currently raising money on Kickstarter to build more prototypes at various scales, which could be exported in containers to places that need them most, like Palestine.

Bags of old coffee grounds hang in the dank dressing rooms of an abandoned Rotterdam water park, growing oyster mushrooms. Two men turned the former Tropicana space, an old teen hangout, into the perfect damp, dim environment for their business, making use of the structure while the city council decides what to do with it. ‘RotterZwam’ rents the building on an anti-squat lease and have transformed it into a fascinating example of adaptive reuse and urban farming.

Tropicana is fairly infamous among Rotterdam locals, but closed after the former owner went bankrupt in 2010. The space had been plagued with problems, from hygiene to sexual assault. It sat empty until Siemen Cox and mark Slegers, RotteZwam’s owners, realized it looked like a giant greenhouse.

Though they hope that central glassed-in space – formerly the pool – will eventually become a greenhouse, for now, they’re making use of the dressing rooms and basement, which offer ideal conditions for fungal growth. The crew hangs bags of coffee grinds from the old Tropicana clothes hangers, and before long, they sprout oyster mushrooms.

They collect the coffee from local cafes, transport it in their carrier bicycle, and give the compost to worms to create an extremely low-waste operation. The produce about 20-50kg of mushrooms every week, and sell it to local restaurants, bakeries and food trucks. They also offer DIY mushroom-growing kits.

“Cities like Rotterdam produce nothing but waste and commuters,” they say in an interview with Vice’s Munchies. “This entertainment park represents that perfectly – we build things and, when we don’t want them anymore, we need others to clean it up, to sweep up our garbage. That’s not how nature works, though – in nature wast doesn’t exist. In this building we hardly ever buy a thing, because eery material or nail is already here.”

Most urban environments aren’t lacking in sunlight – it’s a lack of square footage and healthy soil that makes it hard to use these spaces to grow food. While many a high-tech concept design has envisioned vertical skyscraper farms or entire cities built from scratch, we need low-cost solutions that can be implemented into disused urban spaces, easily assembled and moved when necessary. These smart urban farming and gardening ideas reclaim pallets, cardboard tubes, shipping containers and bicycle wheels, and many take advantage of sunny available spaces on rooftops, in abandoned buildings or along stretches of hot concrete walls.

The Growroom: IKEA Flat-Pack Spherical Garden

Developed by IKEA’s external innovation hub, Space10, the Growroom is a spherical structure that makes it easy to grow lots of food in a compact space thanks to its unique design. Since shipping the structure around the world would be too expensive and negate some of the benefits of local food sourcing, IKEA decided to offer the structure as an open-source design built with plywood, a CNC milling machine and a rubber hammer.

Floating Gardens in an Abandoned Chinese Factory

This area along the Pearl River Delta in Shenzhen was once a thriving community relying on fish ponds and water-based commerce, but most of that has since vanished in the face of rapid urbanization, leaving many abandoned structures behind. ‘Floating Fields’ occupies this space and makes it useful again as an aquaponic garden. Created for the Urbanism\Architecture Bi-City Biennale, the installation is an experiment in water-based gardening, algae cultivation, sustainable food production and water filtering in an underutilized urban environment.

Recycled Cardboard Tube Garden

Water-resistant, recyclable cardboard tubes provide the basis for a modern pop-up garden in Sydney by Australian design studio Foolscap. The tubes were used to build the walls of a temporary outdoor recreation space, taking inspiration from the formwork used to cast concrete columns in a nearby Sydney neighborhood. In addition to an outdoor theater, food and co-working areas, ‘Wulugul Pop Up’ had its own edible garden full of native plants.

Grid Garden on Wheels

This clever portable garden rests on reclaimed bicycle wheels and features an open gridded design so sunlight can reach tiered plants. The ‘Why not in the garden?’ installation by A4A Rivolta Savioni Studio was literally rolled out into a Milan city square to demonstrate how concrete urban spaces can be temporarily used for food production.

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Reclaiming Urban Food Production 12 Smart Designs For Farms Gardens

The world’s largest indoor farm has already proven just how amazingly successful food production can be outside of standard agricultural setups, and these 10 urban farm designs and concepts take the possibilities even further by taking advantage of disused spaces, reaching high into the sky and employing modular, portable, prefabricated configurations.

Jenga-Like Urban Farming Ecosystem by OVA Studio

The Hive-Inn City Farm is a prefabricated, modular farming structure that could brig fresh, locally grown food to busy urban districts. The structure reclaims shipping containers and stacks them in a Jenga-like configuration, with each container dedicated to a specific function from growing a certain type of food to recycling waste. The design echoes that of OVA Studio’s original Hive Inn concept, which uses the containers as individual hotel rooms.

SPARK Senior Living Center and Vertical Farm Concept

This concept by SPARK Architects solves two problems in one by combining housing for Singapore’s rapidly aging population with urban food production. The ‘home farm’ creates a lush, vibrant garden environment that’s pleasant to live in while also catering specifically to the needs of seniors and using a vertical system to grow edibles, offering part-time employment for residents in the gardens

Mini Harvesting Station for Forgotten City Spaces

On a smaller scale, various spaces around the city that aren’t being put to good use could serve as temporary locations for miniature farms. The Harvesting Station by Conceptual Devices can grow up to 200 plants within 43 square feet, and is topped with a water harvesting tower that irrigates the plants automatically.

Vertical SkyFarm for Korea

Downtown Seoul, South Korea could become a powerhouse food production center if concepts like Aprilli’s vertical farm are actually built, potentially sustaining a significant number of the city’s large population. The tree-shaped structure frees up space on the ground while raising ‘leaf’ platforms far above street level for access to sunlight, and serves as an iconic symbol of sustainability.

Geodesic Rooftop Greenhosue for Urban Farmers

Another small-scale rooftop ming solution is the Globe (Hedron) by Conceptual Devices, a geodesic dome for flat urban rooftops that’s framed with bamboo and functions as an aquaponic system to produce both fish and vegetables. Each greenhouse can feed four families of four year-round.

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Sustainable Food In The City 10 Smart Urban Farm Designs

Even for native New Yorkers who are rarely surprised by the secrets offered up by their fascinating home, the hidden NYC that Alex MacLean captured might be something completely new. And if you have never lived in New York, you are sure to be blown away. The architect turned pilot turned photographer took to the skies in a helicopter to capture a world that very few ever get to see: the rooftop outdoor spaces that bring some urban dwellers right into suburbia.

(image via: Princeton Architectural Press)

Flipping through the pages of MacLean’s Up On the Roof (a copy of which was provided to WebUrbanist by the publisher), all of the trappings of suburban life are evident. The barbecues, picnic tables, gardens and swimming pools call to mind neighborhood backyard parties – only these are no backyards. These are the tops of tall buildings right in the middle of one of the most vibrant cities in the world.

(image via: Princeton Architectural Press)

MacLean became aware of this secret world almost by chance. An intriguing image he saw on Google Earth inspired the pilot to take a swing over Manhattan while out on a photography assignment. The initial reason for the detour was quickly forgotten when MacLean began to notice an entirely unexpected layer to the city far above the sidewalks. From then on, he began documenting those amazing rooftop spaces.

(image via: Princeton Architectural Press)

Just like suburban backyards, the roof spaces run the range from sparse and minimal to flawlessly manicured to absolutely chaotic. It is wonderfully mesmerizing to examine each page, leaning in close so as not to miss a single detail. These high-up spaces have been used for everything from playgrounds to restaurants to art exhibits to fully-functional urban farms and even golf courses. In one bizarre case, a replica of a World War I British fighter plane sits on a rooftop runway.

(image via: Princeton Architectural Press)

While many of the older buildings sport retro-fit rooftop spaces – added on many years after the buildings were constructed – some new buildings have rooftop living and recreational spaces built in. MacLean notes a particular new building in Williamsburg on which the roof space is segmented into many individual outdoor areas, to be sold later at a premium to residents.

(image via: Princeton Architectural Press)

The nearly 200 rooftops detailed in MacLean’s book are perfect examples of urban adaptivity. Even urbanites who wouldn’t dream of leaving the city crave an outdoor space in which to relax. Since rooftops account for one third of all impermeable surfaces in New York City, it only makes sense to put all of that space to use.

(image via: NY Mag)

It is interesting to note that, since rooftops have typically been used to house industrial objects like water towers, compressors, and ducts, these things now have to coexist with the rooftop living spaces. In some cases the solutions are remarkably elegant, such as enclosures that camouflage all of the mechanical things. In others, the spaces meant for people simply wind their way around the inconvenient objects.

(image via: NY Mag)

MacLean’s engrossing book can be enjoyed simply for its beautiful photography and glimpses into ordinarily-inaccessible places. But for urban enthusiasts, it also inspires a sort of giddy excitement over future possibilities. As more and more of the world’s population settles in densely-populated urban areas, more cities will start to resemble New York…and more urbanites will head to the roof for their daily dose of nature.