Thesis: Initial Problem and Solution

This coming fall I will begin preparing for my thesis, which will officially start in January. Beforehand it is important to understand what issue I want to address. By taking two years off (working) before starting my graduate studies, I’ve had time to reflect upon what my interests are.

Broad topics such as science, botany, agriculture and urban issues have always been of special interest. My desire has been to look to things such as nature and ideas in science fiction that may generate solutions to problems that will help advance our civilization in the right direction. Over the past few summers I’ve read some great pieces on the future of our crops, biomimicry and science in general. Through that reading and my own personal interests, I thought it was rather easy to arrive at an issue that interests me, and reflects my upbringing in the Midwest.

The issue revolves around the current state of agriculture. Our urban centers by the year 2050 will reach significantly higher populations, upwards of 80% in some cases. This of course, means more food consumption. Our farms are already using genetically engineered crops to meet our current needs. Lets look at America’s favorite crop, corn. Corn production in 1900 was 29 bushels/acre, last year it reached 162 bushels/acre. Mass production of single crops may provide more food for our urban centers, but has detrimental effects. Our land is deteriorating (see the dust bowl of the 1930s) from overuse of the same crop. Large expanses of single crop fields are the holy grail of food source for insects, resulting in the need for large amounts of pesticides. There are several other environmental and political reasons why our current farming practices are outdated, I’ll save those for another day.

The central problem and issue regarding agriculture is land. The horizontal trends of farming for the past …. well forever…. have resulted in using much of the land that is available to us. My proposal to this problem, is to investigate vertical farming as an alternative source of food in cities. While this idea has been examined by a few architects, it is still relatively uncharted terrain in the public’s eye. For those uninitiated, vertical farming is essentially growing crops in towers located inside urban centers.

I’m sure there are advantages and disadvantages right now, and there is extensive research that needs to be done to discover these. I won’t get too bogged down looking at the policies and political implications, but will mostly focus and the architectural, social, environmental and mechanical issues with my thesis.

So stay tuned for research updates, precedents and other goodies.