Integrated systems for rooftop and wall agriculture to enhance building energy efficiency and urban food sustainability

Project description

Integrating vegetation into building rooftops and walls offers multiple benefits, including mitigating the urban heat island effect, reducing storm water runoff, filtering particulate matter, enhancing building energy efficiency, and improving indoor and outdoor air quality. While decorative plants have gained traction in the construction industry, the use of edible plants in the design of urban buildings remains limited and under-explored. This is despite the significant role that urban agriculture can play in enhancing food security for local communities, enabling urban areas to become more sustainable in their resource utilisation. The limited knowledge, consideration and use of rooftop and wall agriculture is due to insufficient policies and public awareness, installation and maintenance costs, structural constraints, soil requirements, and cultural practices. Despite these challenges, there is growing recognition of the potential for these systems to contribute to urban food production.

This project aims at formulating design strategies and systems for incorporating advanced farming practices into green roof and wall arrangements. By utilising computational fluid dynamics-based techniques to model and simulate microclimatic conditions and interpolating these with energy simulations and typological analysis, the study understands the impact of rooftop and wall agriculture on building energy consumption. The goal is to establish new agricultural frameworks for building envelopes that enhance food sustainability, provide income opportunities, increasing energy saving. By addressing the limitations and exploring innovative solutions of agricultural systems in urban buildings, this research seeks to demonstrate how integrating edible plant systems into urban architecture can enhance sustainable and resilient urban environments and increase food security.

Key objectives:
•Analyse microclimatic conditions under different edible vegetation types and configurations.
•Quantify energy savings, air quality improvements and stormwater management through green roofs and walls.
•Assess economic benefits from rooftop and wall agriculture.
•Compare different green roof and wall typologies and their suitability in diverse urban contexts.

Outcomes

Highlight the expected outcomes of the project.
1. Digital and physical green design prototyping
2. Industry partnership and collaboration
3. Building energy efficiency modelling
4. Interregional comparative study
5. Recommendations and guidelines for building codes

Essential capabilities

Computer Modelling software expertise , Interdisciplinary research approach

Desireable capabilities

Horticultural knowledge; Landscape architecture foundations; Urban planning foundations

Expected qualifications (Course/Degrees etc.)

Degree in Civil Engineering and/or Architecture