 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. So good to have you all back to another exciting episode of Human Human Architecture, a broadcasting live here from our Paradisal Metropolis, Metropolitan Paradise of Honolulu, Hawaii. And I could have said, should have said, because to some degree when you look at what we eat at the food supply versus some hundred years ago, we're 100% on our own, we're actually only, you know, to a minimum fraction of that. So one could also call us a food desert. And in order to change this back to where it was, we have our perfect guest for that today. That's Gundula Prok. Hey, Gundula. Hello. Hi, Martin. Thanks for being here. Gundula is a fellow German. But don't worry, we're not going to talk in German here, at least not all the time. Although I gave your show a dual sort of language title, and I pretty much called it Gundula's Greens Garden City Slash, and here comes the German part, Gundula's Grüne Genießbare Gartenstadt. So you guys figure that out what that means. So please share with us your exciting research. You're an associate professor at the University of Washington, at the College of the Build Environment, and you're an architect by training, having worked for Richard Meyer and other important people. And so, and your research is in that, to bring us back the green into our originally jungle environment here. So we're so excited to hear how you do that, and you do this by introducing to us a book that you wrote a while ago, and we saw that, I think, here at the very beginning. So please, let's jump right in. Yeah. I wrote this book, Creating Urban Agricultural Systems, an Integrated Approach to Design, specifically for architects and designers in the build environment, because they often don't understand what is necessary and don't understand the greater implication. I admit. Yeah. So, the book is basically in two parts. One part looks at the environmental systems that are needed, and the other one is about the human expertise. And so if you go to the next slide, you see that. We could get the first slide up, please. Number one. So there. This is the book cover. Yeah, yeah. We could get the number. Yeah, so the environmental inputs that you need to grow are clear, water, nutrients, and solar energy when we go to plants. So that's pretty much clear to everybody, but when you start to look at the larger implications on the global systems, urban systems, it gets complex quite quickly. And so looking at these three large areas, here, water, for example, when you look at the urban water cycle, you can identify, in design with urban agriculture, alternative water sources. We all talk about rainwater harvesting, greywater use, or building waste water. And they could be introduced into urban growing. That's, for example, condensation, fire-conditioning. Yeah, exactly. You here have probably a lot of that. So unused water that is often very little polluted or clean enough to grow. And so we don't take that into account, so an awareness will help. And then urban agriculture can be also a means to low-impact water management. So it has a lot of positive impacts on the water cycle. And then the nutrients. Let's go to slide three, please. The nutrients, we don't have closed loops anymore. When you look at the green part of this diagram, that's a natural system that closes on itself, but human intervention have brought it out of balance. And this is especially dangerous when you think about finite nutrients. So the only way we can preserve them for generation to come is to effectively recycle them. How do we close a loop with nutrients and potentially generate energy composting and so on. And that's on any level. And the third one is the other source, which we have plenty of here, is just the sun. Yeah, so if you go to the next slide, the photosynthesis process drives the carbon cycle. And we often forget this. And one of the largest challenges for us in the built environment is really climate change. And we work very hard. But if you understand that this is all set in motion by growing vegetation, we can have a larger impact. So that's, I think, a little bit forgotten that these two are so tightly connected in our everyday work. So grow more to save the planet. That's kind of the second part of the book is then about looking at what people need to bring to the human expertise. And maybe to start this, just to see in slide five how I've organized this. These are common growing systems in urban agriculture. From the upper left, the most natural permaculture that tries to mimic natural systems to the most technically advanced or technically amended is indoor growing. So while permaculture uses everything as nature, indoor growing needs everything artificially, from irrigation to minerals for fertilization to electrical light. And the enclosure potentially. Yeah, the enclosure, of course. So that is also like the what is indoor and what's outdoor. And then the next slide shows here an overview of looking at these different systems from a regular soil-based farm to an indoor growing and compares how much start-up funding do you need? What's the area you need to run a commercially viable farm? How many people will need to work there? And what's the productivity? Like how much can you produce with this system? Granted, most of my research is based on temperate climate. So when you see the diagrams, the outdoor growing is a maximum of nine months, six months often. That's where we come from already. Yeah, where we come from. You here in Hawaii have, of course, a 12-months growing cycle, but indoor growing would have that in other climates. So the production is quite different depending on what system you select. And you have a great next slide that shows all these things considerate, right? Encompassing in one calling diagram, showing all these components, how they interact. Yeah, so this is basically what the humans have to bring to the table. And not just the farm operation, how to grow, but also how to finance, how to market, how the community is integrated as customers and as, you know, permitting, allowing this to happen. Like all that needs to line up for a farm to work. And then our professions in the built environment have to come in for an integrated design process to understand what is needed. So only if those three components come together, I think you can have a successful farm operation in the city. And if you guys want to know more about the book, you got to buy it, because we're not going to talk about more about it, but we're going to talk where the book is currently leading you to, and if you can get up the next slide for that. More or less this book led to this international interdisciplinary collaboration, City Food. And this is a project that works on implementing aquaponics on a larger scale in the city, on a broader scope. And I work with research colleagues in Germany, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Brazil, and my lab at the University of Washington represents the US. So this interdisciplinary team brings together aquaponics or aquaculture experts and experts from the built environment. And we work together to advance food production in cities. And the environmental, really scientifically look at what the environmental impacts are. We can move on to the next slide. So if you don't know so much about aquaponics... Yeah, next slide, please. Aquaponics sits in the sweet spot, if you look at this diagram again, between the natural system and the highly technical ones, because it is technical in terms of it works on the hydroponic and aquaculture systems, but it uses the nutrients that the fish produce. So it's naturally produced nutrients, to the most part at least, that are then brought to the plants. And therefore it has, in terms of sustainability, a really large potential. And if you want to know more about... The meaning of it? Aquaponics, if you go to the next slide, it just shows a very, very rudimentary understanding that fish produce waste that's then transformed into nutrient by microorganisms and that then the plant can take up. And in terms of what physically has to be there, it's one of the aquaculture components as in fish tanks and all the environment that is needed to support the fish and then a distribution system, which farms have used all kinds of hydroponic distribution systems. So that's the minimum setup. And it comes in all sizes, these systems. Yeah. Let's move on to the next one, which is briefly touching on why aquaponics again and then more importantly, because there's actually also a show that deals with all the subject matter. So we're like in the interstitial phase and space as well between that show and our show. So what are the architectural implications? Yeah, so why would architects work on this? Exactly, why would they have to bother with that? And if you go back to the slide 11, this is sort of our preliminary classification. So you have the system, but then in most climates, temperate climates, you need an enclosure as in greenhouse or growth space. And then you have to set up an operation, the farm operation and the context to the city. Okay. Or the connection to the city. And then these later three, you know, the built environment professions are really important. So let's look at some of these. You brought some examples here, some precedents. So let's move on to the next slide. State of the art currently in hydroponic and adapted by many of the large aquaponics farms are these highly technically supported greenhouses, large arrays of these gutter-connected greenhouses. And these don't necessarily care how they're operated, even energy-wise, right? So it could be still on a fossil? Yeah, they are all on a fossil. They're usually large footprint because they can be placed almost anywhere. We have found them anywhere in the US, in any climate zone. And that's interfering with our mission of saving the climate, the planet as well. So let's move on to the next, which is more interesting to that degree. Yeah, so we researched those, but we are really interested in passive solar greenhouses. So the aquaponics solar greenhouses is a great example from Germany. These take basically a passive solar idea, and that is, or has been introduced early when in the 70s US and Germany talked about passive solar. Chinese actually did it. It's vastly distributed through the country. They grow in the northern region. Huge amounts of vegetables with it, and we don't know about it. And it's basically at almost no energy cost, no carbon footprint. So it exists more still in a testing phase, prototype phase, very, very promising examples we found. But here? You don't need it. So let's go to the next slide, because you're looking at us here on the next slide. Yes. So you have the great climate. You are in paradise. You are in paradise. You don't need an enclosure. So some protection sometimes you see some of the farms have covers for solar protection or rain that the crop is not damaged, but they can be just out in the open. They're not very dense for that matter. But productive. They're not yet so architecturally. So let's jump into that and the next slide. Yeah. So this is a really amazing prototype or case study. It's not a prototype. It's actually now implemented on a larger scale as sky greens in Singapore, where you can compare the climate. The crop is grown on vertical racks, these A-frames where the conveyor belt takes crops up and down, and they're exposed on the top to more sunlight and then less on the bottom. And at the bottom they also get irrigated. Exactly. Yes. So they cycle several times a day. And they are, if you go to the next slide, enclosed by a very transparent but very vertical greenhouse. They're up to 18 feet tall. So you need structural support, but also protection from the sun and from the heavy daily rain there. And so they basically hang in a structure that the greenhouse is very different than we can see greenhouses usually. So it's very, and I would, not having done the research, I believe this could be a great setup for Hawaii. If you look at it, you know, it's almost like the new crystal cathedral. And this has a very powerful architectural. And the productivity is much higher because you have the vertical and it's very small. One criticism you had is, and we might move on to the next slide while we talk about that this is, you know, it's very land consuming. So it's probably going to be more on a suburban sort of a scale, right? Not necessarily. So Singapore has a similar condition. It's an island and they have even denser than you are here. And so this is a rendering. I think in a further distant stage of development of sky greens, but they have already a small array of these tall greenhouses. So what is seen on the left are these greenhouses. They can be tightly packed. And so they can build, you know, a whole plant factory. That reminds me of something we're going to look at the end. But next picture is I was probably, excuse myself, to be a little bit more thinking about integrating in an existing urban fabric, which this system here is doing. This is basically the low tech version also in Singapore has a similar A-frame that is static. So it's to be able to operate it. It's not as high. The plants need more solar protection. So that's a top doesn't get damaged from solar radiation. But it is on existing rooftops in the city. So you see in the lower smaller photograph that it's actually in an urban context. I see them all over Waikiki now in my mind, because if I would take you, unfortunately, you have to fly back to a neighboring island early tonight. But next time I take you up to the sky of Waikiki, which is a rooftop restaurant. And you look at nothing but underutilized just roof membrane skies. So these these guys could be all over the place. And then there could be the people who operate them. Could be some that we usually traditionally called homeless, which could become farmers that you train and could operate the system and make themselves meaningful as another sort of a component. Maybe very a vision. Yeah, the comp crop is that's one part of their mission to say we need to utilize a roof. Mm hmm. Very good. Let's go to the next page here. The next step in our research is how can we integrate this in buildings? And here the ICT building in Barcelona is actually a building, a university campus building research facility that has integrated rooftop greenhouses. And they investigate, have the set up to measure the integration with the building system. So that is the most advanced example we found to date. That really looks at building integration in its highest development, not just placing an on top, but really integrating with the system. And you just having been up at our academic hill here at the University of Hawaii in NOAA, I can see you wishing, you know, we would have a demonstration project like that too. Obviously, you know, again, less enclosed, more open. But again, if we don't do it up there, who's going to do it? Yeah, exactly. Universities can be the driver to make this test this and then, you know, implement it in private practice out there in the many neighborhoods that we have. And the next two pictures, the next picture is sort of a deja vu or revisiting with James Ehrlich. We want to spell him Ehrlich. Hi, James, who I've been in touch and through Chris Ford. Hi, Chris, who was a previous guest on our show. So it's all reconnecting here. And it's first region project here in the Netherlands. And James is very interesting to making a follow up one here in Hawaii. So we need to all reconnect. So explain us a little bit about the one in the Netherlands here. So this is a suburban project to densify suburban living and integrated with food production. So they have these greenhouses integrated with residential buildings that produce the food for this community. And you see in the next slide that they have these greenhouses also as social spaces. So in these greenhouses, you grow food, you grow your fish, and you socialize. So a very connected way of thinking about integrating food production to not make it this technical, disconnected operation, but really bring people together. You have other heroes that we're going to look at the next couple of slides here. French guys who do this maybe even more. Yeah, so that. Extendedly. Yeah. SOA architects, Paris based, have great projects. And they are not just beautiful renderings, but they have substance. So the firm is working both on how to implement them and how to visionary or in visionary thinking about those. And what I really admire about their work is that they juxtapose this food growing with everyday activities or urban experiences. You see here a supermarket where the crop is growing on top. You basically, when you buy or produce, you see crop growing. And it's not disconnected as some rooftop greenhouses on supermarkets that have been actually implemented. This one goes a step further and connects us with it. And celebrate that architecturally. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's a phenomenon, an individual, and there's an even more speculative one yet backed up by scientific data, right? The next page of project, please. This one, I thought of you with your jungle urbanism. It's in Paris, and these towers would sit in the relatively low rise skyline of Paris. And wherever you in a street look up, you would see one of those towers. And I think this is a fascinating thought. And they need greenhouses. You don't. So there's suspended greenhouses. Just suspends the growing here. And then one that the next slide is a project thinks about a similar way of integrating with unutilized areas between housing projects that are often not very good amenities for people. They don't use them that much. But if you put community gardens and not only community gardens in the ground, but also small greenhouses as here, you could activate that and make that really a social component of these residential areas. And the next slide sees it also as an urban intervention where these spaces are activated also at night. You can grow at night. And it activates these spaces that in some communities are problem spaces. I think this is a really very thoughtful project. It certainly is. And we want to prove that even more with the last couple of pictures. So we go into the next one because a lot of that stuff really reminded me a lot of what we were doing research-wise and what we're envisioning here. And I would like to have your feedback on that. So this is growing, intensified growing out in the countryside. So keeping the farms, it's almost like the Sky Greens operation, where you don't scatter it and have it traditionally on the ground, but in a more compact setting. Exactly. And the next one here. And then integrating it in buildings. So I think from the technical point of view, you can do this, but you here in Hawaii have the climate where you could just strip facades of buildings and replace it by growing or integrate it. There are a lot of facade greenhouses if needed and grow vegetables or like productive or non-productive, but make that an integral part of the building. And you haven't recognized this here is our vacation fabric, purely vacation fabric of Waikiki. And you have Kurt Sandburne here endorsing this sort of intervention here, sort of re-envisioning that sort of monofunctional urban fabric. I'm a resident there and I swim out every morning and swim far out. And then I shut my swimming engines off and I look at the backdrop of the green mountains and I see the grays, the gray ones in front and I'm visioning to convert that. And this is certainly not meant literally, but very figuratively with the many systems you kind of introduced to each other to make that sort of urban environment more comfortable in so many ways, right? The next picture you already alluded to, jungleism, right? I mean, this is where we're right now, where we take the genetic code of nature and grow these individual plants that are inhabitable. And you know, they have such a small footprint that you even remember one from your Richard Maier days in New York way back and they were certainly not aiming towards, you know, being growing towers, but, you know, having a small footprint means you can get air and light to it from all sides, right? And that's what plants want and human being want. That's a really interesting thought also in terms of operation. And you start to think about the facade. So that is a thought that has to be how residents, so if people live behind these curtains, green curtains, living curtains, if they're operated with somebody else, what's the productivity? It doesn't have to necessarily be, you know, the examples we looked at first were all on productivity. Yeah, yeah. No, and we can jump to slide 30 maybe for that reason because we look into, if we zoom out here, we can see at the top left, you know, the dwellers and they're like synchronized with the nature, with the natural environment. And then on 29, the benefit would be that, you know, due to their more organic nature, there wouldn't be eyesores as much as conventional hard architecture would be. And they're a softer way. And then again, that's not meant literally, but figuratively in many ways. They would be more pleasant and would be more appealing so many ways. So let's go to the 31 here real quick because you were talking about photosynthesis, which is obviously happening the most at the top right. So here. Yeah, I think it's depending on how intense the radiation is that you get the solar exposure. And I think this image shows that it also can have a strong social impact. So between producing for productivity on commercial gain to the social impact of urban agriculture, you have a wide range of possibilities. And all of them are very valuable. So if you have facades, growing facades in on buildings, it might impact the residents behind the facades, the homes. And we're not maximized production and we're at the end of the show. But we're going to conclude with the next two pictures here, which is touching on that aspect of social because where the building meets the ground where there's a soil out of which a plant grows, right? That's a very critical level here. And so this is showing that not only the sort of production, but also the consumption or the distribution of food should be a more socially integrated aspect that we grow more stuff that's produced here. We can eat it right away and even the people who are underserved, right? We can serve them really sort of easily again, so to that degree. I want to share here, this is premature to where the same thing happens. And so we were both on the way here. It's trying to give you a quick overview of Honolulu and I drove you through Kakaako and maybe want to share as your last little sort of, you know, what caught you in driving through this new sort of neighborhood and as far as food you want to share that has to do with the green tower. The green towers, yeah. So there is no food production, no connection as a large supermarket, high end supermarket. Whole foods. And so that's the only connection people have to their food source. Yeah. And it could be much more integrated. Yeah, and it has a green tower, but unfortunately it's only the fossil elevator tower that got painted green. And we're talking, you know, you got to replace that with something more clever than everything you've been introducing to us. So I think we're going to say we all better catch up and do a homework because when you come back, hopefully soon we have made significant steps of improvement. I hope so. You have the climate to do it. Yeah, if not here where, right. Yeah, exactly. Thanks for kicking our butt to that degree, which is much appreciated. And so hope to see you guys next week for another episode of Human-Human Architecture with John Hara about Hara's paradise of Hawaii up at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. And until then, please stay as genuously as gundula. Bye-bye.