Homewood Urban Grow
High Capacity Urban Aquaponics Facility
Homewood, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania

Homewood Urban Grow is a high capacity, vertical aquaponics, urban farming facility. Located within the Homewood community in Pittsburgh, PA H.U.G. is designed to address global systems of food production by relocalizing production back to the communities that are being fed. Reimagining a new typology of warehouse as a pedagogical factory, H.U.G. invites its consumers to enter and visually participate in the food that they are consuming. Simultaneously, by providing public spaces in the form of an eco park on the roof to encourage and promote recreation and community centered around food.

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Urban Grow is designed as a part of a micro community within Homewood, sharing the site with multi family housing complexes as well as a terraced garden covering an outdoor produce market. Filling the role as the center for production and recreation, Urban Grow links the distant housing complexes and the community to the new MLK rapid transit bus station. Connecting to the transit allows for the facility to be easily reached by members outside of the community, providing easy access to food donations to all vulnerable members of Pittsburgh.

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Grown in isolated, bacteria free bubbles. The facility produces a variety of crops at the rate of 3x the speed than soil grown. Up to 4 different crops can be grown simultaneously with the multiple bubbles. By using a circular system of production where fish are farmed and their waste split to be recycled for dry fertilizer and ammonia rich plant water, allows for a regenerative system of production. Using both the produce of fish and vegetables Urban Grow can support 40-50% of 3,800 residents yearly diets. That is over half of the Homewood neighborhood.