Urban Ponics will design and help to create a 240m² ‘shade house’ at Farnek’s brand new staff accommodation centre in Dubai South – Farnek Village
The vertical garden at various stages of growth. (Credit: Farnek.)
Farnek, a UAE-based facilities management (FM) company, has entered into a contract with Urban Ponics, a Dutch green-tech company, to create a rooftop vertical garden at its new staff accommodation centre in Dubai.
The company said that it has decided to embrace the concept, to repurpose the bare concreted space on the rooftop and to grow fresh vegetables as well as other produce for its 5,000 staff, living at the AED200m ($54.4m) complex.
Under the contract, Urban Ponics will design and help to create a 240m² ‘shade house’ that provides a mix of shade and light to create suitable conditions for shade-loving plants.
The company will transport the shade house in parts from Holland to Dubai and Farnek’s in-house engineering team will assemble the metal tube framework for the 3m high structure onsite.
The rooftop garden will include shade net, grow pods and lava buckets
The shade house will also feature shade net, grow pods, lava buckets, misters, pumps, water tanks, irrigation and drainage pipes.
Farnek CEO Markus Oberlin said: “Farnek Village will soon be home to thousands of our employees and we wanted to create a project that would be symbolic of our purpose and our values.
“Due to its sustainable design, space is at a premium in the Village and this initiative makes perfect use of an aspect that is generally underutilised at best and completely ignored at worst.”
During the construction phase, international experts and local materials will be employed to grow the other produce using sustainable methods.
The growing methods include the usage of vertical farming columns for a “mistponic” application.
The application is said to be the most sustainable soil-less growing technique that uses nearly 90% less water compared to the conventional hydroponic and aquaponic systems.
Farnek will use the other 150m2 of rooftop space to accommodate solar panels that will meet all hot water requirements as well as more than 4,000 LED-lights to be installed across the complex.