How Floating Agriculture Communities Can Help Adapt To Climate Change

Editor’s note: The following information is derived from an interview Agritecture conducted with Digby Hall, Founding Director of Climatewise Design, and architect Madeleine Gallagher, as part of Agritecture Studios. This first virtual Agritecture Designer cohort supported architects with a deep interest in urban agriculture who lacked the technical background necessary to move forward with their concepts confidently. Learn more about Agritecture Studios’ first cohort!

Perplexed by the reality of rising sea levels, where landmass shrinks and water bodies cover greater distances, what are cities and architects to do to ensure both survival and sufficient food production to feed ever-growing populations?

In the face of climate change, architects everywhere are making both the bizarre and the futuristic possible by taking food production to the waters. 

Digby Hall & Madeleine Gallagher are two architects who took on this challenge of designing feasible floating communities centered around food production, as part of Agritecture Studios.

With over 25 years of expertise in sustainable design and climate resilience strategies, Hall wanted to use this opportunity to explore “a number of challenges that we face: democratic and equitable access to fresh, safe and affordable food, urban mobility and land affordability, community resilience, resource scarcity, and climate change.” He firmly believes that urban food production is the answer to these problems because it is “a critical component of urban climate resilience and food security.”

How did the team decide to tackle this challenge?

With the chosen location of the scenic Sydney Harbor, this team of architects “explored the curation of a living system that integrates a range of food-producing techniques such as soil-based, aeroponic, hydroponic, vertical and controlled environment agriculture – the best of low to high tech that when combined can produce a reliable source of nutrients and income for a family.”

The solution itself took the form of a hexagonal floating farm. This design decision gives individual farms the ability to “plug and grow to create organic communities, following the seasons or markets. Inspired by the Oceanix concept, this challenge delved into the detail of how we might create a living ecosystem that, when nurtured, can feed our bodies and our wellbeing.”

With this idea in mind, Hall & Gallagher modeled what they call “‘plug and plant’ components, including wicking beds for the central garden (corn, banana trees, flowers), InvertiGro modules for the microgreens, and hydroponics and aeroponics for the balance. The outdoor native coastal gardens for bush tucker, biodiversity, and habitat have assumed a built-in garden bed but could equally be supported by the WaterUps wicking beds. All elements could therefore be swapped amongst the wider community to allow diversification or specialization as desired.”

This range of production systems and methods allows for greater diversity in produce and allows the community to not be reliant on any one individual system for their daily meals. Additionally, to expand the model’s scope beyond fruits and vegetables, Hall & Gallagher decided to add “insect farms and bees, and dairy and poultry animals.” With this addition, the team believes that the model “can create a permaculture system that is high in nutrients and protein.”

But, floating farms need extra efficiency to manage their resources.

With his interest in sustainable design and climate resilience strategies, Hall was intrigued by the challenge of creating a sustainable farm that could support an entire family with the only external input of sunlight. 

He explains that “whilst for us a permaculture approach seemed intuitive and has certainly informed our pathway through the Agritecture Designer platform, the fact that the farm might be severed from the land demanded that we expand the permaculture thinking into the built systems.”

Water and energy are two of the biggest concerns when it comes to food production. 

To tackle the freshwater concern, the team decided to integrate a solar still into the design of the greenhouse structure. This still distills water as impure water is contained outside the collector, where it is evaporated by sunlight shining through a transparent collector, and pure water vapour condenses on the cool inside surface and drips into a tank.

As for energy, the farm relies on “the integrated solar panels and on-board battery storage, allowing the controlled environment systems to work 24/7, and free green electrons to be traded amongst the wider community.”

To further their self-sustainability, “the nutrient cycle includes the on-board treatment of all human and animal waste using natural and/or technological systems, with the animals forming a key part of the nutrient chain and helping close the loop on waste.”

But, how do we make this model more economically feasible?

Enter Agritecture Designer.

Through this software, Hall & Gallagher were able to build a farm model that could produce beets, broccoli, cucumber, blueberries, salad mixes, tomatoes, and a range of other leafy greens and vegetables, yielding a maximum annual revenue of ~$190,000 with a payback period of 9.69 years.

With Designer’s calculations, the team learned that their “high-intensity diversified floating farm may be a viable model with the key assumption being that the residents are the farmers - thus reducing the labor cost in the model.” With this assumption in place, water is expected to be the greatest cost with almost 50% of the total OpEx (operating expenses) breakout.

Designer “showed us that we had the makings of a 10-year return on investment based on our farm mix and approach” - though it is noteworthy that the platform does not estimate the capital costs of integrating clean energy production systems. Still, the software “proved a worthy tool in helping us envision how such a community might work.”

With this data backing up Hall & Gallagher’s vision for a Floating Community in Sydney, we’re excited to see how this project gets actualized. Get started with Designer today to make your urban agricultural dreams a reality!

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