Rurban Revolution

April: Brooklyn Grange offers fresh produce from city buildings

Brooklyn Grange opens in New York as a large-scale rooftop farm to supply vegetables to local residents.

Key Development: The city farm creates a form of relationship and community between farmer and consumer.

June: Rurbanism sweeps the design sector

In the Rurban design direction, we explore how Rurbanism is influencing a soft, craft-inspired aesthetic, led by the likes of Joost Bakker, Iittala and RA concept store.

Key Development: Rurban isn’t just about urbanites growing vegetables, but influencing design through materials used.

December: Mulberry opens Rurban-inspired store

Luxury brand Mulberry opens a Rurban-inspired flagship store in London featuring a rustic dry stone wall.

‘We began by exploring the things that were close to Mulberry, such as the Somerset countryside where the factory is,’ Hannah Carter Owens of Universal Design Studios tells LS:N Global. ‘We looked at local crafts that could be refined and inserted into the store.’

Key Development: A luxury brand shows its heritage in the big city, bringing rural elements to its flagship store in central London.

April: Selfridges opens urban gardening shop

Selfridges opens an urban gardening shop called Grow! in collaboration with guerrilla gardening activist Richard Reynolds.

Window displays for Grow! feature repurposed gardening devices created by guerrilla gardeners, as well as photographic portraits by Reynolds of urban gardens around the world.

Key Development: A retailer inspires consumers to embrace unexpected ways to garden when living in the city.

May: HK Honey launched in Hong Kong

HK Honey is launched as a honey brand, sourcing its product from rooftop beehives in Hong Kong.

The company installs beehives in businesses around the city to create a local network. ‘People want to know where their food comes from,’ says founder Michael Leung.

Key Development: The Rurban Revolution makes its way to unexpected markets. In a city as populated as Hong Kong, HK Honey shows that environment-enhancing apiaries are possible.

June: Urban Physic Garden opens in London

An Urban Physic Garden opens on a previously derelict site in south London for two months in the summer of 2011.

Acting as a site for workshops, talks, film-screenings and events, the garden is evidence of the rise of rural pockets in urban surroundings.

Key Development: Derelict spaces are being transformed into community hubs, village greens for the city.

March: Rurban Revolution hits Melbourne

Café culture in Melbourne turns towards Rurban values and revivalist ways of thinking, as discussed in our Melbourne Safari.

Designers from the Hassell practice erect an Urban Coffee Farm and Brew Bar for the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival.

Key Development: Rurban continues to travel the globe, reaching the shores of Australia and blending with the strong coffee culture.

July: Scheme fosters urban composting

Hello Compost lets urban residents in New York trade organic waste for fresh produce.

In a bid to inspire the city’s population, the service also provided credits to low-income residents to buy produce in return for food waste.

Key Development: Rurban moves beyond rooftop apiaries and vegetable plots with this programme that encourages city dwellers to do some good with their waste.

July: The rise of foraging

As foraging goes mainstream, the Thought For Food collective hosts a dinner challenge in which guests are asked to locally forage for, pick or purchase their own dinner ingredients.

Key Development: A growing desire for provenance means that more consumers are willing to hunt, or in this case gather, their own dinner.

February: A self-sustaining space opens in Japan

Nest We Grow in Hokkaido, Japan, is an eco-friendly community centre for locals to grow, harvest, store, cook, eat and compost local produce. The roof harvests rainwater and melted snow, which is used to irrigate a living plant wall.

Key Development: Rurban is becoming more entrenched. We are now seeing its principles in architecture with buildings that mimic the self-sustaining farm mindset.

April: A localist restaurant opens in industrial east London

Craft London offers British-only produce, with many of its vegetables grown from its own garden. The restaurant also uses old techniques of preserving vegetables and other ingredients to stick to its seasonal schedule.

Key Development: Rurban developments are popping up in unexpected parts of the city, forcing advocates of the trend to think in new ways.

September: Noma to re-open as an urban farm

Chef René Redzepi has announced that he will be closing famed Danish restaurant Noma in its current iteration at the end of 2016. Redzepi, famous for his foraging tasting menu, wants the restaurant to evolve, which means relocating it to a different area of Copenhagen – now a skate park – and creating a self-sufficient urban farm.

Key Development: Rurban approaches have become more nuanced – Redzepi is taking the principle to its extreme with a city farm that will keep the restaurant ultra-seasonal and local.

October: Winery launches series of dinners in community gardens

In an effort to bring greater awareness to both the food we eat and the wine we drink, winery Cake Wines launched Community Feast, a series of dinners hosted in the community gardens of Sydney. Designed to highlight the communal gardens of the city, as well as the produce they grow, the Community Feast series brought together Sydney’s best chefs with its little known gardeners.

Key Development: The aesthetic surrounding Community Feast, which included an events page with features on the chefs and gardeners, embraced a more subtle sophistication, showing that Rurban no longer necessarily means rustic.

January: Technology company Parrot unveils a smart plant pot that monitors and waters house plants

The Parrot Pot uses a watering system that ensures plants don’t dry out and detects when the soil holding the plant is too dry. As well as regulating water, the Pot also has temperature, acidity and light sensors, which through the app tell you whether to alter the heat of the plant, the fertiliser you use or whether it needs more or less light.

Key Development: The Internet of Things is helping time-poor consumers to reconnect with nature.

March: Ikea releases its own hydroponics kit

Swedish retailer Ikea has collaborated with scientists from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences to develop a system that makes it possible to grow plants in low natural light conditions. Ikea’s team set about creating a product that would enable its customers to grow their own produce all year round, with the added benefit of learning how to grow and care for different plant species.

Key Development: A greater awareness of their effect on the environment is causing many households to adopt a more Whole-system approach to Rurbanism

July: A new residential development in New York features an urban farm

Urby is a 5,000-square-feet residential space with a series of social spaces including a communal kitchen, terraces with beehives and an urban farm. The farm is used to cultivate more than 50 varieties of greens, fruiting vegetables, flowers, herbs and roots, which are used by residents and in dishes at the development’s on-site café.

Key Development: At the heart of the Rurban Revolution is a sense of conviviality. This space brings the community together while teaching them life skills.

September: Farmopolis, a bold new urban farming project in London is the cities latest cultural hub

The mixed-use space is divided into a food incubator, hydroponic farm and events and festival space, and will host farm-to-table restaurants. It will also support a new Young Farmer Apprenticeship Scheme, educating the next generation on how to cultivate and harvest crops in the urban environment.

Key Development: Brands are developing Rurban initiatives that engage the local community.