Urban farming to foster resilient cities.
During the 2022 summer school, students explored opportunities and transferrable concepts of urban farming to maximise a positive impact on the community at TEDI-London’s home: Canada Water. Their brief was to create solutions that are innovative, feasible and commercially visable, supporting data and insights to:
Each team designed and developed a solution to support our neighbour, Paper Garden. Summer school 2022 concluded with a Demo Day, where the teams presented their ideas and prototypes to their peers, industry partners, local community members and TEDI-London staff.
The winning team designed a floating exhibition and cinema to be situated on the water, providing a community hub for the Canada Water area. Powered by solar panels, the solution featured screens made out of plants and an interactive sound system.
This team designed an app for Canada Water's community farmers, which contained helpful features such as meal planning recipes, information on relevant local events and forums where users can trade produce and share advice.
The team designed a community garden with systems to minimise water waste. This included self-watering plant pots, which use a sensor to monitor the moisture levels of the soil and automatically water the plants when needed.
Hoping to educate the younger generation – alongside their parents and teachers – on what urban farming is and the issues it aims to solve, this team designed a prototype for a food truck which doubles as a portable classroom.
This team designed interactive watering systems for community gardens, such as pumps attached to bicycles. They also used sensors to create a traffic light system to indicate when the soil was sufficiently damp for the plant, preventing over-watering.
This team designed interactive teaching tools to help neurodivergent users navigate community gardens and learn about plant growth. This included a robotic assistant, which helps them learn about a particular plant before leading them to it.
From hydroponics and aeroponics, to LED lighting and water harvesting – learn about the technologies and methods used in urban farming.
Students learnt about the opportunities and transferrable concepts of urban farming and how they could help our neighbour – Global Generation – make a positive impact on the community in Canada Water. Industry partners JLL and London Grow worked with students to help them understand the factors that contribute to a rise in urban farming and the technologies that enable it.
