FARM-X.
Vertical Urban Farm — Feasibility Study.

Farm-X (2014–2015) is a modular vertical urban farm concept that radically repositions food production within the city. Historically, food production has been located in areas of low real-estate value, spatially and symbolically separated from dense urban settlements commonly described as cities. This separation has shaped not only agricultural landscapes, but also the cultural and infrastructural relationship between production, consumption, and urban life.

Operating in a fully controlled environment using hydroponic farming techniques, the system is designed to grow up to five tons of fresh leafy and fruit vegetables per day within a footprint of approximately 1,000 square meters.

Rather than functioning solely as an agricultural facility, Farm-X is conceived as a device for producing both food and urbanity. The project proposes the reactivation of abandoned warehouse plots — widely diffused within North American and European urban fabrics — by transforming them into productive infrastructures embedded in everyday city life.

The optimal configuration corresponds to a medium-sized urban block measuring approximately 32 × 32 meters and rising four stories in height. This new building typology is compact, adaptable, and easily integrated into existing urban contexts. Its lightweight hydroponic infrastructure allows the farm to be relocated once a neighborhood reactivation phase is completed, or repurposed for alternative functions by dismantling the farming equipment.

Beyond food production, Farm-X is designed as a closed-loop system capable of processing organic waste to generate energy. By reintegrating waste, power, food, and labor within a single urban infrastructure, the project reduces distribution distances, shortens waste cycles, and establishes new forms of local employment and service exchange.

By relocating agricultural production into the urban core, Farm-X extends a line of research that redefines infrastructure as a relational field rather than a neutral support system. The project anticipates a dimension later formalized within Epistemic Design: spatial organization is not secondary to social and economic systems, but actively reorganizes them.

Displace — Farm-X displaces food production from peripheral agricultural zones back into the urban core. By overturning the historical separation between countryside and metropolis, the project redefines the city itself as a site of primary production. This displacement operates at the level of infrastructure rather than representation.

Expose — The project exposes the hidden infrastructures that sustain contemporary food systems, including energy consumption, transportation distances, labor conditions, and waste cycles. By concentrating these processes within a visible and accessible urban structure, Farm-X renders the material and energetic costs of food production legible at the scale of the city.

Mediate — Farm-X mediates between agricultural production, urban planning, energy systems, and local economies by integrating them into a single operational framework. The project translates abstract supply chains into spatially concentrated and socially accessible infrastructures.

Activate — Farm-X activates abandoned industrial sites by transforming them into productive and social infrastructures. Activation occurs through use, continuity, and local exchange rather than spectacle: the farm operates as a long-term catalyst for urban regeneration driven by production rather than consumption.

Farm-X does not propose vertical farming as a technological solution in isolation. Instead, it frames food production as an epistemic and urban question, in which the reorganization of space, infrastructure, and proximity fundamentally alters the relationship between city, territory, and sustenance.