The Food Growing On This Building Will Be Served At A Restaurant Inside

The Food Growing On This Building Will Be Served At A Restaurant Inside

France will make quite a statement about feeding the world when it unveils its pavilion at the Milan Expo 2015. Not only will vegetables, herbs and hops grow on the building’s exterior, but that same food will also be served at a restaurant inside. In fact, the whole place is set up to be like a market from the future.

With rolling ceilings and arches throughout, the award-winning, all-wood design by X-TU Architects is meant to mimic France’s rolling countryside. It’s sort of like the architects took the hills and turned them upside down. “Below the horizontal roof, the Great Market presents itself as a ‘reversed’ and spectacular landscape that makes the buzz, a landscaped ceiling that evokes the French identity born from territories,” the architects say in a statement.

The Food Growing On This Building Will Be Served At A Restaurant Inside

But it’s the outside of the building that really stands out. The outer façades are designed to accomodate a network of hydroponic gardens that will adorn the building’s exterior. If all goes according to plan, chefs will harvest the crops and serve them at a restaurant above the market.

This is just the latest in a long tradition of building-integrated architecture, that dates as far back as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Even some housing projects in New York City are running their own hydroponic gardens.

The Food Growing On This Building Will Be Served At A Restaurant Inside

The architects have high hopes. “At the time of short-circuit retail, [the project] reinterprets the market model,” they explain. “Once a place of exchange, tomorrow’s market will be a place of production to be consumed on the spot.”

It’s as if your farmer’s market was also a farm and a restaurant — which isn’t a bad idea. [Dezeen]

The Food Growing On This Building Will Be Served At A Restaurant Inside

Pictures: X-TU Architects


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