Entrepreneur Centre - Vertical Greenhouse

London South Bank University, Architecture and Design, South Bank, London

Project idea

Whit Brexit, the food Uk eats, might be affected by the departure of UK from EU. Considering the UK import half of their food from abroad and produces half of it, the current Brexit situation may cause an increase in the cost of importing fruits from abroad. Thirteen percent of the population works in farms. So, the question is: “will we still get fresh fruit through the customs in a long run? what`s gonna happen to the price of fruit standards? Could Brexit actually be an opportunity to promote and adopt healthy eating and source food from a more sustainable and safe origin?”

For this reasons the development of the entrepreneurial centre aims to promote a more sustainable way of living to improve health and well being whilst bringing back nature to the city and develop greenhouses to grow your own vegetables and products for the community.

The other aspect to take into consideration is that bees are drastically reducing and the production of eighty percent of vegetables and fruits depends on it. Therefore, Bee hives will be situated at the top of the building. Those are fundamental in our diet and with the current Covid-19 pandemic, vitamins from fresh and organic produce enables us to live a healthy lifestyle and reduce the chance of illness.

Project description

The idea is to design an international entrepreneurs centre that
provides both accommodation and business spaces for tenants.

This is a project seeking a delicate balance and adequate connection between the private and public spaces. It is expected to provide a solution to respond to user`s daily routines, which will enable tenants to run their business with client facing facilities and yet maintain their comfortable living space.

Technical information

Responsibly sourced material and natural finishes are applied on the interior to give a more sustainable and natural feeling to the spaces.
Steel frame and windows reminds of a high-rise greenhouse. Due to the transparency the internal spaces express the connection with nature.

The trees on site will be preserved as they provide privacy, reduce noise pollution and glare and accentuate views. This natural elements increases the quality of life for the resident of the community. moreover they clean air as they produce oxygen and reduce smog. The aim of this new development is to reconnect the nature with the community and improve well being and health. Instead, to attract more bee which fundamental to grows vegetable ad fruit, flower bed and more trees will be planted on site.

The main energy source used for this development is solar energy, as well as the biomass energy that contributes on a smaller scale.The heat recovery and ventilation system is located on the top floor to extract moist and stale air from wet rooms and recovers the usually lost heat from the extracted air. This reduces impact on the environment. Another way to save energy is to monitor the connected system remotely and take advantage of the stack effect to create movement of air to moderate internal temperatures. Therefore, the cold external air is drawn into buildings at a lower level, warmed by sources of heat within the building and rises through the building to vent out at a higher level.
As last rainwater harvesting system reduces demand on the mains supply, offers some resilience from local supply problems and reduces
the amount of energy used for water treatment and transportation.
The second skin of the building facing the sun trajectory prevents overheat of the building and favours natural ventilation.