Posted on 02/10/2026 4:59:09 AM PST by MtnClimber
DEI for buildings. . . . Hey, Chicago, try getting real.
Behold: This exercise in ultra-woke-techno-narcissism for the Chicago lake-front is called (variously) Eden Rise or Sky Droplet by Yanko Design. It is supposed to be a “vertical farm skyscraper.” The promotional literature says it all:
A skyline where fresh lettuce grows a few floors above your head, rainwater is harvested from the clouds, and the architecture itself works quietly to heal long standing urban inequities. This project dares to ask a radical question. What if skyscrapers did not just house people, but fed them?
At the heart of this proposal lies a deeply human problem. Food deserts. Across Chicago, many low income neighborhoods struggle to access affordable, nutritious food. Grocery stores are scarce, fresh produce is often out of reach, and fast food becomes the default not by choice, but by circumstance. These conditions have fueled health disparities and reinforced socio economic divides for decades. Rather than treating this as a policy issue alone, the project reframes it as an architectural opportunity.
Note: The proposed site for this prank is the most affluent neighborhood in Chicago. Hardly a food desert. The actual “low income neighborhood(s)” are miles away on city’s south side and west side. Now, imagine the cost of “farming” inside a building, the electricity for grow-lights, for running the water pumps, and probably an army of farmhands to manage all the plants, the hypothetical crops they might produce, and the technology itself. Imagine the complexity of the system and the many failure points entailed. Imagine a water leak on the 63rd floor.
Woke-ultra-hyper-complexity in Action
Consider that this is why farming is best practiced outdoors, on the horizontal plane, on dirt. . . with rain. Consider, too, that Chicago is in the Midwest, surrounded by the world’s best farmland, and how easily food can be transported across the Midwest’s flat terrain, by rail especially, from farm to market.
If you really want to solve the “food desert” problem, try asking why the problem exists. For instance, how does epidemic shoplifting break the business model of a supermarket?
Thanks to John Kane for the nomination!
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Eyesore of the Month ping
Lettuce at $100 a head
“At the heart of this proposal lies a deeply human problem. Food deserts. Across Chicago, many low income neighborhoods struggle to access affordable, nutritious food. Grocery stores are scarce, fresh produce is often out of reach, and fast food becomes the default not by choice, but by circumstance.“
What absolute pathetic bovine excrement. Not that it isn’t somewhat true, but the reason it is somewhat true is swept under the rug.
If they actually go through with building this, Chicago is more stupid than I thought possible.
“Prank” is the right word.
They might as well go the next logical step.
Growing lettuce requires soil and fertilizer.
They should integrated producing soil and fertilizer in to the building design.
All of the human feces produced by the people in the building should be collected and composted for use in their lettuce beds.
It may put people off eating the lettuce. But if you are going to push stupid ideas you might as well push it off a cliff.
Good thong (er, thing) Chicago is not subject to any seismic threats. But when those “grow lights” shine out from the three Sauron eyes out above the city of Hell...
Hehe, regenerative farming!
Lettuce at $100 a head
The cost of such a complex, glass intense design in Chicago is probably more than $500 per square foot. The minimum would be $200 a square foot. That is from 87 million to 218 million dollars an acre.
The cost of the most productive vegetable producing land in America is in Yuma County, Arizona, at about $30,000 per acre. It is irrigated and produces several crops per year, essentially being in production all year. The insanity of such a urban skyscraper project, roughly 2-5 thousand times as expensive in producing food, is very weird.
I guess the thought is the ambiance is worth it.
It's Sustainable Farming
I had to go look it up, because this is the most bass ackwards thing I’ve heard of lately. The link confirms that they thought this would be a good model for food deserts.
https://competition.adesignaward.com/ada-winner-design.php?ID=164052
Imagine being so incredibly stupid that you think the people in these “food deserts” actually care about their environment or want to lift a solitary finger to do what it takes to raise their own food.
This is college educated, white-guilt liberalism in a nutshell.
Well, in these here parts, the new buzzword is regenerative. Maybe the Wokies haven’t caught on yet. “Sustainable” is passé.
Think of the weight on the structure from moist soil and water, then the elements. High winds off the lake. It’s just a prank, right?
Sustainable and Regenerative are from two different lexicons.
Sustainable is political
Regenerative is technical.
You are right about that. For the Wokies, it’s all about the political. Technical goes right over their heads.
This has to be one of the most idiotic proposals yet by left-leaning nitwits. I bet a bunch of lettuce would cost hundreds of dollars from their gardens. The big question...are there enough brain-addled, blinded-from-reality rich people to invest in this lefty wet dream???
Shades of Mordor!
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