Haoxiang Xiong
My project envisions a future where food prices continue to rise and social pressures push technology and food closer together. The project envisions a recycling system and virtual farm in 2050 New York City. Inside the building, people lie down and use VR devices to remotely operate internal and external machinery to work together to feed themselves, while the building will redistribute water, fluid food, nutrient solution, culture solution and other resources to ensure people’s survival. No system exists on its own. The building is a part of a larger network, working with large farms and individual producers to achieve a relative balance.

Virtual farm & Self-circulating: System-long section of recirculating system

The Virtual Food & Self-Circulating System project consists of a building level circulation system and a community level circulation system, where the two systems will exchange resources. The project is based on 3 key basic studies, DRIs, applications of soilless culture, and VR. These three bases will balance the total amount of resources in the system, mainly consisting of soilless culture medium, small amounts of excreta, water, liquid nutrients.Internal resource transfer is completed by fixed pipes and transmission modules on the left, and resource allocation is semi-automatic.

Site & system map

Virtual farm & Self-circulating system: Personal farm image

The technical difficulty of soilless culture lies in the cost of expensive equipment and mediums. In the future, people can buy or rent a soilless farm in their house, which will replace part of the partition wall of the house or become part of the yard. At the same time, the recirculating system will provide the production and recovery of test culture or medium and collect part of the crop in return.

Virtualfarm & Self-circulating system: Living/VR floor image

The technical difficulty of VR is to locate and feedback the user’s coordinate information. At VR/LIVING FLOOR, people spend most of their time in their rooms using VR headsets and gloves, staircases where supplies are exchanged, and virtual feeding devices that deliver nutrients or liquid food to keep them alive. After they confirm they are working, the inner room will unlock some of the hidden devices. It’s a normal living area when you’re not working. Part of the ceiling has an AR display to remind the internal resources. The locator/cleaner will follow the user a little bit after the user starts working.

Virtualfarm & Self-circulating system: Virtual farm image

Once the user starts working, they will act in the data model, which is exactly the same size and location as the real object, but not exactly the same as what the user sees through the VR device. For example, the distance between the soilless planting wall on the left is the lowest distance between the mechanical arm, which is completely insufficient for human beings. Once in position, the user glove controls the robotic arm to perform a variety of tasks, including maintenance, inspection, collection, and more.
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