Build Your Own Growroom
I’ve always appreciated creativity especially when it involves architecture. Creativity is not a quality that everyone possesses, but it can be acquired with determination and effort.
A student sent me this article showcasing this wonderful food-producing architecture that promotes self sustainability. I love ideas like this very much and I hope that one day, we can grow our own foods in Kechara Forest Retreat too. We are lucky to have all year round sunshine, plentiful rain and no winter and it would be wonderful if KFR becomes a self-sustaining community.
I hope you enjoy the article. Do let me know if you plan to build one.
Tsem Rinpoche
SPACE10 Open Sources The Growroom
The design for The Growroom, an urban farm pavilion that looks into how cities can feed themselves through food producing architecture, is now open source and available for anyone to use.
SPACE10 envision a future, where we grow our own food much more locally. To spark conversations about how we can bring nature back into our cities, grow our own food and tackle the rapidly increasing demand for significantly more food in the future, we teamed up with architects Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum to create The Growroom. Standing tall as a spherical garden, it empowers people to grow their own food much more locally in a beautiful and sustainable way.
From Taipei to Helsinki and from Rio de Janeiro to San Francisco, the original version of The Growroom sparked interest and people requested to either buy or exhibit The Growroom. But it doesn’t make sense to promote local food production and then start shipping it across oceans and continents. That is why we now release The Growroom as open source design and encourage people to build their own locally as a way to bring new opportunities to life.
Easy as 1, 2, 3
Digital fabrication has made state-of-the-art factory tools accessible for ordinary people. A new generation of technologies such as 3D additive and subtractive manufacturing to laser cutting and surface-mount manufacture is available to the public in fab labs and maker spaces in any major city.
This means most people — in theory — could produce almost anything themselves. Just as printers are now ubiquitous; local and on-demand, customised production could become the norm of the future. We’re tapping into this emerging potential by releasing the cutting files for The Growroom. All you then need to build it, is two rubber hammers, 17 sheets of ply wood and a visit to your local fab lab or maker space with a CNC milling machine. The design focuses on making the assembly easy and intuitive for anyone to handle, and The Growroom is produced from only one material, making it accessible and affordable for most communities.
The original Growroom exhibited at CHART ART FAIR. Photo by Rasmus Hjortshøj
Designed for Cities
Local food represents a serious alternative to the global food model. It reduces food miles, our pressure on the environment, and educates our children of where food actually comes from. The result on the dining table is just as fascinating. We could produce food of the highest quality that tastes better, is much more nutritional, fresh, organic and healthy.
The challenge is that traditional farming takes up a lot of space and space is a scarce resource in our urban environments.
The Growroom is designed for cities and with its size, 2.8 x 2.5 meters, it has a small spatial footprint as you grow vertically. It is designed to support our everyday sense of well being in the cities by creating a small oasis or ‘pause’-architecture in our high paced societal scenery, and enables people to connect with nature as we smell and taste the abundance of herbs and plants. The pavilion, built as a sphere, can stand freely in any context and points in a direction of expanding contemporary and shared architecture.
The overlapping slices ensure that water and light can reach the vegetation on each level, without reaching the visitor within and thereby functions as a growth activator for the vegetation and shelter for the visitor.
Mads-Ulrik Husum and Sine Lindholm— the architects behind The Growroom. Photo by Niklas Vindelev
Build Your Own Growroom
You can build your own Growroom in 17 easy steps. Find the instructions below and download the cutting files for free right here.
Please give us a nudge on Instagram: @space10_journal + #SPACE10Growroom if you build your own Growroom or shoot us an email on discover@space10.io. We would love to celebrate your version.
The Growroom have a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License, which means that the design can be shared, copied and built upon without asking permission. The only condition is that you credit the original work to SPACE10 and architects Mads-Ulrik Husum and Sine Lindholm, throw in a link and indicate if any changes have been made.
Good luck!
Getting Started
The parts you need to build The Growroom. Photo by Niklas Vindelev
To get going building The Growroom, there are certain elements that needs to be ready and available:
CNC Cutting Files
Download the CNC cutting files here and share with your local fab lab or maker space that can cut the pieces for you.
Materials
- 13 sheets of plywood: 2440mm x 1220mm x 18mm
- 4 sheets of plywood: 2440mm x 1220mm x 4mm
- 500 stainless pan head screws: 3.5mm x 30mm
Remember to treat the plywood before you put soil and plants in.
Machinery
- CNC machine with a cutter, 8mm in diameter. Alternatively, the Growroom can be cut out on a laser cutter — (fab labs and maker spaces with a CNC milling machine that are open to the public can be found in most major cities).
- Table saw
Tools
- Screwdriver
- Appropriate bit for the screws
- Drill, 2mm in diameter
- 2 hammers
The Growroom is produced in only one material, and is put together with hammers, or whatever hard object you have lying around, that can be used for knocking the chisels in place.
We’ll get back to that.
On the edge of each level, the thin plywood is mounted with the use of the screws.
We will also get back to that.
We hope you will enjoy building and using The Growroom.
Cnc-Milled Parts
Drawings by Sine Lindholm & Mads Ulrik Husum
Photos by Niklas Vindelev
Step 1
Drawing by Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum
Step 2
Drawing by Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum
The support pieces are put in place in the vertical A boards as shown in STEP 1. The vertical A boards with the attached supported pieces, are placed into every second slot in the Big A circle. Notice that the slot has small holes to one or both sides.
Photos by Niklas Vindelev
Step 3
Drawing by Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum
The chisels are knocked into place under the bottom as illustrated above. Keep knocking the chisels with the hammers from both sides until they are completely fastened.
Photos by Niklas Vindelev
Step 4
Drawing by Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum
The shoes are placed under each vertical A board with chisels inside it. The 4 shoes provide the foundation of the pavilion, so the pavilion won’t stand grinding on the edge of the vertical As.
Photos by Niklas Vindelev
Step 5
Drawing by Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum
The vertical A1 boards are put into the remaining slots of the floor.
Step 6
Drawing by Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum
Horizontal B1-B4 are now mounted on top of the vertical As with the attached support beams and the vertical A1s. Make sure that the opening is as depicted above, where there are no support beams.
Photos by Niklas Vindelev
Step 7.1
Drawing by Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum
Vertical B is put into the slots of horizontal B1-B4 and slid to the side onto the part of the vertical A board that is sticking through.
Step 7.2
Drawing by Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum
Two chisels are knocked into the slots as depicted above, aligning the 2 vertical elements.
Step 7.3
Drawing by Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum
The chisels are positioned loosely in the slots first below and then above B1-B4 as depicted above. Once the chisels are positioned as depicted, they are knocked into place with two hammers from both sides simultaneously.
Step 8
Drawing by Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum
You should now have successfully mounted the layer B of your pavillon as depicted above. In order to finish the pavillon, repeat Step 6–7 for the remaining layers: C, D, E, F, G
Photos by Niklas Vindelev
You have now finished the pavilion, and are ready to head on to mounting the edging strips.
Step 9
Drawing by Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum
Step 10
Drawing by Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum
Step 11
Drawing by Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum
Step 12
Drawing by Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum
Step 13
Drawing by Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum
Step 14
Drawing by Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum
Step 15
Drawing by Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum
Step 16
Drawing by Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum
Step 17
Drawing by Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum
Edging Strips
Drawing by Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum
The 4mm plywood is cut up on the table saw as depicted above. This results in edging strips with a length of 1220mm. The edging strips are suggested cut per 100mm.
Since the geometry of the pavilion isn’t equivalent to the dimensions of plywood, each level has strips cut up in various lengths, as depicted in the table here.
Drawing by Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum
The edging strips are 100 mm strips cut from plywood board measuring 1220mm x 100mm, with small add ons where needed. As you can see, the edging strips are mounted separately to the edge of the pavilion, placed directly next to each other.
When mounting the edging strips, it is important to position the band, so that the top of the band touches or aligns with the detail of the vertical boards, as depicted above.
Thereby you get divided spaces on most levels to contain the soil and plants, which is 70mm high. Below the edging strips becomes room for LED strip lights if wanted. The arrows shows where to place the screws.
The edging strips are placed as depicted above in the section drawing. As you see they are always placed where the vertical boards have an indentation or the opposite. Be aware that the edging strips on ground level (Horizontal A) have a gap as big as the entrance, so the edging strips should be placed so they align with the above levels in terms of the entrance gap.
Drawing by Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum
When mounting the edging strips, it is important to position the band, so that the top of the band touches or aligns with the detail of the vertical boards, as depicted above. Thereby you get divided spaces on most levels to contain the soil and plants, which is 70mm high.
Below the edging strips becomes room for LED strip light if wanted. The arrows shows where to place the screws.
Drawing by Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum
Depicted above, you see the little element, that is in the slot of the vertical B boards. This element is mounted from each side of B. On the element the edging strips are screwed in ( B-inside), from the inside. The length of the strip, as described on page 18, assures that the edging strip gets the proper circular curvature.
Drawing by Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum
In this diagram an LED-strip is depicted, mounted on the bottom of the edging strip. This allows for an invisible and safe lighting of the pavillon, similar to what is found on the original Growroom. The LED-strip can be mounted the same on all the levels.
Drawing by Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum
The Pavilion is done, and you can start filling in the soil and plants on level C, D, E, F, G. To have a better control of the soil and water, you can advantageously put plastic in each space, so that it covers the whole area before you put soil and plants in it.
The Growroom in all its glory. Photo by Alona Vibe
Enjoy and please give us a nudge on Instagram: @space10_journal + #SPACE10Growroom if you build your own Growroom or shoot us an email on discover@space10.io. We would love to celebrate your version.
Source: https://www.space10.io/journal/space10-open-sources-the-growroom
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We should consider changing our diet and lifestyle to one that gives the minimum negative impact on our environment, we are responsible to give our future generation a better place to live.
This article show the designers have seriously consider to make this easily available to more everywhere with affordable price; and make cities around the world greener, more self sustainable and the city people healthier.
Animals show love for humans! Cow, lions, apes, dogs, bears, parrots and more can all be very affectionate and show surprising emotions when it comes to expressing their love for people. An emotional animals hugging humans video.
https://video.tsemtulku.com/videouploads/comment-1546455946.mp4
All of us are responsible for our planet, no one owns it, we coexist and share this space. Therefore, we have to each play our role in maintaining the health and balance of where we live in. This group of people believes in the self-sustainability and to fulfill their responsibility of the citizen of the world, they share the design of their product with everyone for free.
Why are people encouraging us to grow our own vegetables but no one comes up with ideas to keep animals for our own consumption? Simple, because it is not right to kill another life. Vegetables are able to provide us the nutrients we need, we don’t need meat for that. Besides, growing vegetable requires less land, fewer resources compared to keeping animals. And, a vegetarian diet gives us a healthier body.
If we don’t protect and take care of the planet we are living in now, our future generation will suffer. We have done a lot of damage to this planet, look at how we have polluted the sea, causing many sea animals to die; look at how the air we breathe every day is getting polluted; look at the junk we produce every day, how it affects our environment. It is not fair for us to do so much damage to our planet and want our future generation to fix it. We should consider changing our diet and lifestyle to one that gives the minimum negative impact on our environment, we are responsible to give our future generation a better place to live.
You guys are going to have a cute attack with these two super adorable videos of Tsem Rinpoche’s doggies Oser and Dharma.-
https://youtu.be/JX1UdH7IjQ8
And
https://youtu.be/YGD7CtNmnuI
The videos JUST came out!
Enjoy!
H.E. the 25th Tsem Rinpoche loves animals and is passionate against their harm, torture, and abuse.
The few minutes a day we spend on social media creating awareness for animals who cannot speak is purely spiritual and humanistic practice because we are trying to alleviate pain from another sentient beings and that makes us more spiritual, and that makes us more spiritual and more humane.
This is a very creative invention. And very unusual and beautiful too. Something that is really out of the box mindset. Thank you Rinpoche for this interesting article.
Definitely loving the idea that of a spherical farm pod that brings agriculture to the city. Apart from that, it is also great that the design is such that it can double up as an aesthetical feature, which can attract the attention of different people (beyond those who are into greenery and agriculture). It really says a lot about the confidence and sincerity of the creators in respect of their creation that they freely share out the details and forgo turning it into a money-making opportunity. It is also a testament to their integrity in staying true to their real purpose for this creation. Hopefully, this effort will be the stepping stone for people to further pursue and contribute to their idea and the overall objective of self-sustainability (primarily through local food producing architecture).
Growroom is an excellent initiative, and it is a design that with some time and effort someone can put it together. Nice design that allows light and air to come into the structure and that all the plants in the growroom can receive sunlight it needs. And it is like a work of art, very interesting structure to our perception.
There are quite some ideas of planting vegetables in vertical way, but this is the one that serves the purpose of planting in limited space, practical (getting enough sunlight) and with nice design. This design is creative and without mention it one might thought this is a beautiful decoration instead of a structure to grow vegetables.
Quite amazing is this seems hi-tech product is made by easy to get material, ply woods. It shows the designers have seriously consider to make this easily available to more everywhere with affordable price; and make cities around the world greener, more self sustainable and the city people healthier.
Many city dwellers are going back to basics and realizing the benefits of eating healthy and being in touch with nature. Living in cities can be very stressful to the human psyche. I remember when I used to live in Manhattan, I would take breaks from the city and go to New Jersey to visit my relatives. Once in a while I felt suffocated being in the concrete jungle.
New Jersey had lots of greenery. I remembered feeling recharged after spending long weekends there.
Having beautiful structures like this to surround ourselves with plants are great ideas and beneficial for our mental health. Spending time to care for the plants are also very therapeutic and calming. Great way to de-stress!
This is indeed very good effort by these guys to design such cool yet practical device to grow our own food. What is even more noble about this is they open source the whole thing! There are a lot of designs/thoughts that goes into the device, but they selfishly give it a way for people to build it for free.
I checked the design and it is not something it is easy for us to make the pieces. I do hope that someone can make the pieces and sell them in Malaysia so that we can build one in Kechara Forest Retreat.
This Growroom is such a good innovative idea because:
1) With such a small space required to house the contraption, food can be grown even in an office.
2) Growing our own produce can also increase the oxygen level in the surrounding environment.
3) This type of easy and convenient farming can help reduce stress as gardening/farming has been reported to be therapeutic.
4) With readily available fresh greens, herbs and other vegetables, people are more likely to eat healthily and maybe even adopt a vegetarian lifestyle.
Wish that this is readily available in Malaysia. Would quite nice to have one in KFR perhaps growing our own herbs like mint, basil, curry leaves or even Bentong ginger. 🙂
Thank you for sharing this interesting post, Rinpoche. Learnt something new today.
It is admirable for Sine Lindholm & Mads Ulrik Husum to place their design as open source for everyone to download and copy to manufacture. This shows how farsighted they are in propelling self-sustainability. The first step is always the hardest, and I believe what Sine and Mads had done is towards the right direction. In this way, people from all the around the world who genuinely are passionate and interested in growing own vegetables will be able to start on their own. Without needing to rely on middleman or manufacturer who might end up making the brilliant idea a commercial white elephant. Thank you, Rinpoche for this sharing.
“Build Your Own Growroom” is a most compelling architectural creation to entice one to really go for it. Imagine creating a garden space , a space for nature, in your apartment at the dizzying heights of top floors of multi-level apartment blocks! Growing our own vegetable needs in that global sphere near to your dining room! This is so neat! With a SPACE10 Growroom, we don’t have to go shopping/marketing for our vegetable, herbs and food needs. We grow them ourselves or grow them for our friends and relatives living nearby!
It’s a vertically tall spherical garden or urban farm pavilion. The Growroom’s added attraction is that it is ” an open source design and encourages people to build their own locally as a way to bring new opportunities to life”.
These units are easy to create. The main materials and tools are sheets of plywood(which are treated to ready them for soil and planting)and stainless pan head screws and a milling machine, hammers, drills and screwdrivers. They are accessible and affordable.The sphere is designed to enable light and water to reach the plants at every level .
Producing our own food or growing them locally opens up vast possibilities as alternatives to the traditional sources of out-ot-town farms and gardens and imported food. Nature’s smell of herbs and plants will now fill the air around the spherical garden. We will have healthier and more nutritional food on our dining table.
What a beautiful concept to grow forward into! How marvellous if we can implement such concepts of self-sustainability for the KFR community!
Wow, what a great design and beautifully created growroom structure for vegetables! No wonder our Rinpoche always have a flair for creativity, especially Architecture. It is truly a wonderful and inspiring design for a food-growing growroom to look so superb and unique. This “urban farm pavillion” that the food grows out from will be just as inspiringly delicious, clean, healthy and lovely to look at and to be eaten too! A hearty congratulation to the worthy designer and creator! Thank Rinpoche for the sharing and caring always.
When people do gardening, it normally involves ornamental plants. We have a garden to please the visual senses, to beautify the area. Since there are going to be plants, then why not edible plants? Actually it takes just a little bit of mind shift. We are so used to buying our vegetables, doesn’t it make sense to plant them ourselves instead since it is not that difficult? In the process, we also green the area and there is bounty!
Maybe we think we have no time, it’s too difficult, it is not as nice as the ones you find in the markets or their quality is better if we have to pay for them. But gardening takes time, patience and interest. Some people feel it is a chore. So here we often see busy people having their lawns fully tiled up so there is no more chore to have to mow the lawn, sweep dead leaves, weed, prune, shear, rake, it’s too hot and sweaty, too much work and too messy. We prefer to relax and sit in front of the idiot box. Out of my whole row of houses, it looks like probably 80% of the gardens have been fully tiled up.
It was reported that our cities and residential areas are becoming too concrete. Every little bit of land is being tiled up or cemented over that when our tropical rains fall, the water does not get absorbed into the earth but rather, flow into drains and then to rivers which then tend to overflow and cause floods. Mother earth was supposed to be earth, not concrete.
I used to plant vegetables in my small garden and it is always so impressive to see them flourish and thrive. I would also look forward to harvest and eat the results! I would love to have fruit trees and vegetable plots. Oh, if I had a big garden, if the weather was cooler, if I had time….ok these sound like excuses.
What a super cool idea! It is ingenious and perfect for the modern living urbanites. It is really great to see more and more ideas manifesting to encourage sustainable living in our modern world. Perhaps the abuse on our mother earth, exploitation of her has become too alarming and people are now starting to take action. Climate change is happening whether the new US government acknowledges this or not and if we continue fooling ourselves and exploiting the earth, it will inevitably be destroyed and we will also be destroyed along with it!
So it is good to see urban farming, sustainable living taking shape and being very fashionable. I just hope more people will also realise that being vegetarian is also fashionable and something we need to do to help maintain the earth and the eco-system we live in. So many choose to ignore this and prefer to wine and dine without conscious. Every supermarket should actually play videos of the process of how their meat came to the stores. It is after all the consumers’ rights to know where their product came from and how it is produced!
I hope more and more people will be more conscious and do more to change their way of living for the betterment of our planet. If every does a little, a little can be a huge mountain!
Superb idea and very creative. Home farming in the cities ! Appreciate all the hardwork and ideas to produce Growroom. It’s just like putting a big puzzle and making the whole process so much easier to plant in cities where we always have limited spaces.
We should support more people to come up with such ideas so we can eat our own food and cultivate self sustainability.
Thank you Rinpoche for sharing this article. This is indeed a good idea to grow our own vegetables to consume. How nice to be able to eat fresh and homegrown vegetables. But I think this is only applicable for people who have their own space or garden. Otherwise the Growroom will not fit in.
With folded palms,
Vivian
This is a brilliant idea, we should all grow our own food to eat more vegetables from our own plants. So that the world will not have malnutrition
Amazing and very creative architecture designed space for our home grown foods.It is a good idea for those living in the cities.The Growroom is beautifully produced made it convenience which enables people to connect with nature surrounding with plants. The smell of herbs and plants makes cities dwellers to live in happiness and healthy.
Its takes alot of effort and determination for anyone to build a growroom.Well they can do it,if they have the will power….hoping someday KFR will have one too.
Thank you Rinpoche for sharing.