Hi everyone! A bit over a month ago I made a survey about Solarpunk and shared it here. Now, I finally present you the findings of the survey! I am adding a few pics here for a preview and if you are interested, go check the link where there is a full description of the findings!!
full findings: https://thesolarpunksurvey2024.carrd.co/
I am surprised how many people didn’t get the “trees on buildings” reference…
Hi, I didn’t get the trees on building reference.
There recently was this video about it that got shared in a lot of Solarpunk related places.
Ahh.
In that case I did see the video and voted correctly!
Hey I can envision what I want, and I want buildings rotten with trees.
That video effected how i think about modern solutions not necessarily how i picture a potantial solarpunk future. So I voted yes to the question.
I agree just slapping trees on buildings is not going to magically fix modern society’s much deeper issues. I do still think having roof top gardens is something that could work for a much more advanced civilization with different construction methods and materials.
I dunno i think it has a place in the more imaginative side of solarpunk… a living building (like the ships and buildings from octavia butlers liliths brood series) could definetly support gardens. Or specially grown tree houses. Or hollowed out “mountains” with sunlight vents and an entire forest on the surface. Ooooo or maybe some floating islands where people live inside the verticle garden beds.
Modern concrete and steel based architecture is definetly not ready to have that level of greenery integrated into the building structures. One of the communes I lived at had a rooftop garden, & we had tons of issues with leaks and just the sheer weight of all that dirt and plant material on the structure.
I still love the idea though, lol just not in the modern era.
In Montréal we have several large scale rooftop greenhouses built on top of warehouses. I’m guessing the warehouse construction is probably overbuilt to support the weight, but there haven’t been and major issues yet.
It might not be solarpunk, but it’s solarpunk wearing a tie at it’s day job to find it’s dreams. And their tomatoes are fucking delicious.
That sounds super cool! Warehouses especially seem like a good candidate for gardens. They’re large, typically flat on top, & are often surrounded by paved parking areas meaning they get full sun. Plus the interiors often have easy access to the ceiling making any repairs very simple.
Lol I will say our leaky roof garden was the product of hippie construction, so it was beautiful and really cool-- but not the most carefully engineered 🤣
@Nouveau_Burnswick @hazeebabee
I remember a manual for rooftop gardens from Montreal back in the 1970s.
There are lighter growing media than soil and, of course, hydroponics and aeroponics.
Years of links to urban and advanced agriculture developments at http://cityag.blogspot.com
Years of links to net zero energy building developments at http://zeronetenrg.blogspot.com
Both are also free listservs
I was specifically referring to Lufa Farm’s commercial rooftop farms. Each farm varies slightly in construction, operation, strengths, and weaknesses.
But thanks for those listservs, great resources.
In a solarpunk future I’d hope we’d have the technology to have buildings that grow according to how they are used. That would be awesome.
Anti Commercial-AI license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
Oooo we can dream, and in that dreaming maybe find a way to shape reality :)
Buildings that grow? Can you explain what you mean? My imagination is going wild
I voted no, because I couldn’t help to think how cool it would be to live on treetops instead!
Why do you think people didn’t get the reference? Maybe we just saw the video but thought it was bad.