Urban Farming Rises as Next Wave of Built Form Evolution

Cities have never been designed to feed themselves, but Greenspace founder Peter Fox thinks it’s high time they did. Last month, hydroponic farming company Greenspace embedded its first commercial macrofarm inside Brisbane’s Amora Hotel, bringing food production out of the rural fringe and into the built form. Founded by chief executive and tech entrepreneur Peter Fox ( pictured ) in 2018, Greenspace has established farms in the Sydney and Melbourne CBDs. “I started this business around wellness and around understanding the provenance of what you’re eating,” Fox says. ▲ Greenspace aims to cut the need for packaging and transport for fresh food supplies to restaurants and cafes. “For people serious about the planet, it’s the idea of cutting down packaging and stopping trucking and transport movement, and focusing on flavor and nutrition. So we transform the built environment into farming networks.” Greenspace operates on a hub-and-spoke model, with a larger macrofarm, like that in the Amora, supplying smaller microfarms the size of a wardrobe in restaurants and other spaces, to give them a regular and consistent supply of salads and other vegetables. Farming in the built form A serial entrepreneur, Fox arrived at sustainable city design in a roundabout way. But the founder of travel marketplace Viator—which he sold in 1999 and was later acquired by TripAdvisor in 2014 for $200 million—has the built environment in his blood. “I was the creator of [TV show] Better Homes and Gardens … I had no idea I was going to be a farmer,” Fox says. “But my dad and my brother and his three kids are all architects and we’re all into this idea of greater greenery in cities. “You go to Woolworths, and you buy a bunch of basil, like we did on the weekend, and we had to throw three quarters away the day after.” That kind of wastage happens on a momumental scale within the commercial food sector, he says. ▲ Brisbane’s Amora Hotel at Spring Hill, site of Greenspace’s first commercial macrofarm. “I’m a relative newcomer to the food industry, and I can’t believe how dumb the processes are in regards to storage and the supply chain.” Urban farming is not new, and places where space is limited, such as Singapore, have become extremely good at vertical and urban farming. In Australia, land might not be scarce but transport costs can be eye-watering, as well as being environmentally unsound. Large scale vertical farms like the $150-million Stacked Farm project at Melbourne Airport are under way, while developers are investing in urban farms and allotments of varying sizes as points of difference in mixed-use precincts . But Greenspace makes urban farming more efficient and adaptable. “The macrofarm in Brisbane was installed in two weeks. It’s all modular and mobile. It’s a cookie cutter type thing—we haven’t gone down the path of robots or going too high, so that might be dangerous for our staff,” Fox says. Adaptability and flexibility This adaptability applies to where the macrofarms go in the built environment too. “Initially I thought we’d always be in office buildings, or basements or rooftops,” Fox says. “It’s only been in the last year that we’re now introducing shopfront-type macro and microfarms, where they are the showcase. “We’re now growing and delivering to Sofitel and to Marriott’s W Brisbane, but it’s all grown in the Amora and it’s a really great story for them, and it’s the first hotel we’ve partnered with too, having mainly been in office buildings prior.” ▲ Greenspace’s macrofarm in the Amora Hotel, which launched last month. One of the benefits for the landlord, he says, is a reduction of land tax if you farm on site. And because of the small scale of the farms, they do not require prior council approval. Those are “untapped benefits”, Fox says. Macrofarms, despite the name, can also slot into underutilised spaces. They are around 150sq m, Fox says, although the Amora Hotel macrofarm is slightly smaller. Greenspace’s biggest farm is a 450sq m site in Sydney, and macrofarms are normally within 2km of the microfarm network. “We’re not packaging, we’re not transporting, we’ve got farms around the corner that are serviced to cabinets that are inside offices and hotels, and it’s a subscription-based model, so it’s a very different approach to a vertical farm that spends millions on a facility, and then crosses their fingers they can sell their produce.” Greenspace’s urban farming expansion Efficiencies are increasing too, as Greenspace expands globally, with a focus on renewable energy, but the plug-and-play model requires a surprisingly small amount, Fox says, and uses 95 per cent less water than a traditional farm. In Australia, Greenspace is in talks to set up on the Gold Coast, and restaurants are champing at the bit to get ahold of fresh produce. “Seasonality is one of the big issues in the food business, and many of these chefs have not even seen living crops; it’s boxed and trucked and shopped in from the Netherlands or Spain. So it’s an exciting thing for them.” And Greenspace’s vision is extending globally, with plans to set up in London later in the year. “We have customers wanting to work with us internationally, and that’s an exciting thing for me.”

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