What is Agritecture?
We define Agritecture as the art, science, and business of integrating agriculture into the built environment.
The term was first popularized by our Founder, Henry Gordon-Smith, in 2011, when he was researching how cities could use agriculture to address environmental, social, and economic challenges, and develop resilient food systems in the face of climate change. By definition, agritecture is about applying architectural thinking when designing agriculture for the built environment.
In practice, architects and urban farmers incorporate agriculture into the surrounding city environment in very different ways. Architects frequently design impossible vertical farming and urban agriculture concepts that ignore the realities of successful farming operations. In contrast, agriculturalists and entrepreneurs often miss important design, aesthetic, and social integration opportunities when they develop urban farms. agritecture is about integrating the disciplines of agriculture and architecture so that urban farms can be both practical and well-designed all at once.
Today, Agritecture’s blog covers a wide range of global and local urban agriculture news, including topics such as: greenhouse production, vertical farming, aquaponics, hydroponics, regenerative agriculture, ag-tech, and food systems more broadly. Agritecture’s consulting services are designed to help entrepreneurs, developers, and cities plan and launch successful urban agriculture, vertical farming, and local food system projects. Agritecture Designer is a planning software that makes developing urban agriculture ideas quickly and affordably.
A lot of people ask us “what does agritecture look like?” To help you better visualize what agritecture is, we have curated a selection of projects and concepts below that illustrate the concept and successfully balance the art, science, and business of integrating agriculture into the built environment. Check out our portfolio of work for more examples!