Thank you Jed. My morning bus ride and mile walk was filled with planning out how to build such a building. A lot of the designs on the webpage seem to have a LOT to do with how to shape the building to make best use of sunlight. My thought? LCD monitors. I don't know if you've ever taken one apart, but the light source is a single high power bulb at the top, and it shines down to a sandwich of two plastic sheets. I'm not sure how it works, but that sandwich lights up evenly all the way through, no spot near the top brighter than near the bottom. and there is VERY little leakage from the bottom, it pretty much uses 90-95 % of the light, and still is as bright at the bottom. I'm curious how long you can make those, you could have mirrors funneling sunlight into a sheet like that , have an even amount of light down a wide room. with a little jiggery-pokery you can even lower lighting conditions for certain rooms, and funnel the extra light to other rooms with plants that can use it.
My other thought was for an herb garden, most herbs grow in bushes to about a foot and a half before you harvest. I've got a mental image of a tiered setup. each row is about 6-7 inches higher than the row in front of it, each tier 18 inches deep, so that you have a gentle slope up. There will still be wasted sunlight if you have a direct sunlight through the window setup, so mirror the base of each tier so that light filtering THROUGH the plants get reflected back, doing double duty. Plus, if the mirrors are set up with an upwards angle, another set of mirrors on the ceiling could then reflect extra light back onto the topmost/rearmost tiers of plants. Most herbs will soak up as much sunlight as you can give them if they have enough water and C02. On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 6:50 AM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected]> wrote: > See: > > http://www.verticalfarm.com/ > > This is similar to what I described in chapter 16 of my book, and what the > defunct Cosmoplant Corp. did in Japan. However, these plans call for much > less energy than the Cosmoplant approach. > > QUOTE FROM WEBSITE: > > By the year 2050, nearly 80% of the earth's population will reside in urban > centers. Applying the most conservative estimates to current demographic > trends, the human population will increase by about 3 billion people during > the interim. An estimated 10E9 hectares of new land (about 20% more land > than is represented by the country of Brazil) will be needed to grow enough > food to feed them, if traditional farming practices continue as they are > practiced today. At present, throughout the world, over 80% of the land that > is suitable for raising crops is in use (sources: FAO and NASA). > Historically, some 15% of that has been laid waste by poor management > practices. What can be done to avoid this impending disaster? . . . > > - Jed >
