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Eindhoven Unveils Plans For A Solar-Powered City Block With Living Roofs And Urban Farms
Billed as a contemporary and hyper-modern development, Nieuw Bergen will add 29,000 square meters of new development to Eindhoven city center. The sharply angled and turf-covered roofs give the buildings their jagged and eye-catching silhouettes that are both modern in appearance and reference traditional pitched roofs. The 45-degree pitches optimize indoor access to natural light.
Eindhoven Unveils Plans For A Solar-Powered City Block With Living Roofs And Urban Farms
by Lucy Wang
The Dutch city of Eindhoven just selected MVRDV and SDK Vastgoed (VolkerWessels) to create Nieuw Bergen – a super green block of homes and businesses topped with living roofs and solar panels. Located in the inner city area around Deken van Someren Street, the project’s seven buildings will comprise 240 new homes, 1,700 square meters of commercial space, 270 square meters of urban farming, and underground parking.
Billed as a contemporary and hyper-modern development, Nieuw Bergen will add 29,000 square meters of new development to Eindhoven city center. The sharply angled and turf-covered roofs give the buildings their jagged and eye-catching silhouettes that are both modern in appearance and reference traditional pitched roofs. The 45-degree pitches optimize indoor access to natural light.
“Natural light plays a central role in Nieuw Bergen, as volumes follow a strict height limit and a design guideline that allows for the maximum amount of natural sunlight, views, intimacy and reduced visibility from street levels,” says Jacob van Rijs, co-founder of MVRDV. “Pocket parks also ensure a pleasant distribution of greenery throughout the neighborhood and create an intimate atmosphere for all.”
Related: The Sax: MVRDV unveils plans for a ‘vertical city’ in Rotterdam
Each of Nieuw Bergen’s structures is different but collectively form a family of buildings that complement the existing urban fabric. Gardens and greenhouses with lamella roof structures top several buildings. A natural materials palette consisting of stone, wood, and concrete softens the green-roofed development.
Farmers For Hire Turn Backyards Into Vegetable Patches
Farmers For Hire Turn Backyards Into Vegetable Patches
By KATHERINE ROTH, ASSOCIATED PRESS | Jun 28, 2017, 3:11 PM ET
This 2016 photo provided by The Organic Gardener shows a rooftop garden in Chicago, Ill. (The Organic Gardener via AP)
Jeanne Nolan grew up in an affluent suburb of Chicago. When it came time to apply for colleges, she shocked her family by opting to skip college and become an organic farmer. Then she brought her farming skills back to the suburbs and city, installing and tending vegetable gardens at clients' homes.
The Organic Gardener Ltd., the farmer-for-hire service she and her husband, Verd, started in the Chicago area in 2005, is one of many such services that have cropped up across the country. Some of these farmers have farming backgrounds, while others are landscapers who expanded their expertise, or entrepreneurs from a range of professional backgrounds who just love gardening and the outdoors.
"If you want serious exercise, you turn to a professional trainer to help you do it right. This is like hiring a gardening coach. Some people say, 'Come over every other week for a year' so they can learn and do it themselves. And I also have a hundred clients whose gardens I've been tending for years who are not even trying to do it on their own, but simply love having it done," says Jeanne Nolan, author of "From the Ground Up: A Food Grower's Education in Life, Love, and the Movement That's Changing a Nation" (Spiegel and Grau, 2013).
Urban farming services cater to both homes and businesses that want home-grown produce but not the work involved in growing it. Clients include apartment complexes, grocery stories, schools, shopping malls, even ballparks.
"It turns out that having home-grown produce is something a lot of people really want," says Jessie Banhazl, founder and CEO of Green City Growers, in the Boston area. The company's Fenway Farms project involves planting and tending vegetable gardens atop Fenway Park, where produce is served to fans at baseball games, and a portion is donated to charity.
Many of her clients are trying to get more engaged in the growing process, she says: "There's something about seeing how food grows, at home, school or even at Fenway, and hopefully this influences dietary choices and has a positive environmental impact."
Dan Allen, CEO of Farmscape, with locations in Los Angeles and the San Francisco area, says farmers for hire have a more intimate relationship with clients than landscapers do. "There's something more personal about growing food," he says.
Hiring a farmer for your backyard isn't necessarily cheap, though (prices vary by region). The farmers admit that if saving money is your goal, it's probably cheaper to just shop organic at the grocery store. But they say the experience of growing your own produce, the learning opportunity for kids — and the bragging rights — make it worthwhile.
Another option: having a farm service visit every couple of weeks to teach growing techniques and offer tips.
"It's surprising how much food you can grow in a very small space. As urban farmers, we grow things vertically and on roofs. We know how to plant crops densely. Even in just a 4-by-4 (-foot) square planter, you can grow a lot of food," Nolan says.
Her company grows " pretty much anything you can imagine," she says. "Our most charismatic are tomatoes, peppers and eggplants. And our season runs from March through mid-December."
To provide enough produce for a family of four, Green City Growers recommends three 3-by-8-foot raised beds.
"Whether it's a median strip or a full backyard, or even containers on a balcony, a vegetable garden can happen almost anywhere," Banhazl says.
On Top Of Hong Kong's High Rises, Rooftop Gardens Take Root
Client Gina Ma (left) stands with Rooftop Republic's Andrew Tsui (center) and Pol Fàbrega amid the rooftop garden of a French restaurant in central Hong Kong. Rob Schmitz/NPR
On a typical block in Hong Kong, thousands of people live on top of each other. Pol Fàbrega thinks about all these people as he looks up at the towering high rises above the streets. And then he thinks about all that space above all these people.
"The square footage here is incredibly expensive," says Fàbrega, staring upwards. "But yet, if you look at Hong Kong from above, it's full of empty rooftops."
It is, he says, a big opportunity for growth.
Fàbrega is not a developer. In a city full of bankers, he's a gardener. He helps run a gardening cooperative called Rooftop Republic that aims to make the best use out of Hong Kong's thousands of roofs.
"In Hong Kong, currently there're around 700 hectares of farmland that are being farmed," explains Fàbrega, "So the amount of rooftop space is almost the same as the amount we're using today to farm – like, actual farmland."
Hong Kong's agricultural contribution to its GDP is 0.02 percent. Fàbrega's goal is to boost that tiny number by filling Hong Kong's 1,500 acres of rooftop space with vegetable gardens.
He's starting small, by giving tutorials to city residents. On the roof of Fringe, a French restaurant in Hong Kong's Central district, Fàbrega and Rooftop Republic co-founder Andrew Tsui give a tour of garden containers full of Romaine lettuce, kale, cherry tomatoes, and carrots.
Rooftop Republic has helped fill more than 26,000 square feet of rooftop on 22 rooftop farms. The biggest one is on the roof of Hong Kong airline Cathay Pacific, where 40 employees manage container vegetable plots on a daily basis.
Expat resident Gina Ma's rooftop garden is tiny by comparison, but she's spreading the word at her children's school. "I was like Johnny Appleseed. I was calling everyone up, called the school and I was like, 'I have seedlings they're amazing! And they're all, like, organic and stuff that you can't get here. Take them!' "
It's that last point, being organic and healthy, that's important to Rooftop Republic's clients. "In the case of Hong Kong, we also face a particular challenge that 98 percent of our vegetables and fruits come from China," Fàbrega says. "There's endless amount of scandals surrounding food that's from mainland China."
And that's why Rooftop Republic's first clients were a handful of restaurants and hotels in a city where returning to the land can be as simple as a quick trip up the stairs to the roof.