Ken Yeang plans food-producing building

Ken Yeang

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Green building guru Ken Yeang, of Llewellyn Davies Yeang, is working up plans to design a food-producing building.

Yeang (pictured) said the scheme would adopt principles from Building Integrated Food Production, where food is grown inside multi-storeyed urban farms.

Speaking to the AJ, Yeang said: 'Vertical farms have a smaller footprint than conventional farms and, as food will be locally grown, they will also help to reduce carbon emissions as food will not have to be imported from further away.' 

The eco-architect, who said it was 'too early' to talk about possible sites for the urban farm, added that his team was exploring ways to get buildings to mimic photosynthesis.

'It's similar to a photovoltaic cell but it uses dye cell technology to imitate photosynthesis,' he said.

A spokesman for the UK Green Buildings Council said: 'Innovations like these are going to be hugely important to enable help us to live more sustainably.'