BRINGING SYDNEY TO LIFE WITH THE GROWROOM
18 Aug 2017
ODS took a closer look at IKEA Australia’s Growroom, an urban-farming system that is set to bring food production back to our local communities, helping us to green our cities and keep our carbon footprints low.
ODS was lucky enough to witness IKEA Australia bring their very own Growroom to life underneath the Sydney Harbour Bridge, as part of the IKEA Shared Dining Experience. Demonstrating the importance of planning for the localisation and urbanisation of food production, the team at IKEA prepared a sustainably sourced dinner from the ingredients grown in their version of The Growroom.
The event aimed to raise awareness in Australia about the global conversation of creating sustainable urban centres through co-living and localised food production.
The Growroom was developed by SPACE10, IKEA’s future-living lab in Copenhagen, Denmark, as an architectural urban-farming tool. As our cities expand, and more of our populations relocate to these urban centres, space for food production at the local level is often lost to urban development.
SPACE10, in collaboration with architects Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum, envisioned The Growroom as a means of bringing sustainable nature back into our cities by growing produce locally and limiting carbon emissions from global and/or long-distance food transportation.
The Growroom is a 2.8 x 2.5 metre hollow timber sphere, consisting of interconnecting plywood sections that can be joined together and planted with vegetables, flowers and herbs. The structure is an opensource design that can be constructed by anyone with the time, timber and tools. “Standing tall as a spherical garden, it empowers people to grow their own food much more locally in a beautiful and sustainable way,” states the SPACE10 website.
To demonstrate the ease with which local produce can travel from The Growroom to the plate, IKEA Australia constructed their very own urban garden on the banks of the Sydney Harbour. A chef then prepared a four-course meal utilising the vegetables grown in The Growroom to demonstrate the ease with which vertical, space-saving food produce can be brought from our backyards directly into our kitchens.
Kate Ringvall, Sustainability Manager at IKEA Australia, explains that “We believe that the community of the future will be more about ‘co-living’ – a shared economy where we make do with less space, surrounded by more people.” The Shared Dining Experience was a way to demonstrate how small communities could viably utilise their own Growrooms as urban centres expand and agricultural land moves further inland in Australia.
The plans for your very own Growroom can be found HERE. Further information about IKEA Australia’s sustainable initiatives can be found in The IKEA Australia People & Planet Positive Report 2017 which can be found HERE.