Office farming

Here’s how growing food at work could create a sustainable in-office dining experience.

In the age of fighting climate change, more corporations want to reduce their carbon footprint – and urban farms in offices could be the answer.

Growing food in vertical cages, for example, or plant boxes and bags surrounding meeting desks. All of the resulting flowers and vegetation can be nice for workers to look at, reducing stress and tension. But can these indoor gardens can also generate a sustainable food cycle for its employees? 

With advances in hydroponics – growing plants in something other than soil – New York firm Kono Designs created an urban farm inside a nine-story office building in Tokyo that harvests over 280 types of vegetables, fruits, herbs and flowers. Tomato vines are suspended above conference tables, lemon and passionfruit trees are used as partitions for meeting spaces, salad leaves are grown inside seminar rooms and bean sprouts are grown under benches. With support from agricultural specialists, the employees assist in its daily upkeep that contribute to the preparation of ingredients served at its on-site cafeterias.

Not all offices require a rice paddy in the entrance hall, like those at Pasona Group’s building in Tokyo. But that’s just one example of how the office farm can be localised, from its food source to catering. With food on site, there’s no excuse to depend on motorbikes delivering takeaways when cramming in those extra hours before a deadline.

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Image credit: Piero Zagami and Michela Nicchiotti.