Warehouse Adaptive Reuse for Building-Integrated Agriculture:High-Performance Building Retrofit Prototype Applying Building Performance Simulation

Sara Khorshidifard (Bowling Green State University)

Food and shelter are interconnected fundamental requirements of human life while both agriculture and architecture industries have significant environmental impacts. An integrated, ecological solution that implements high-performance strategies in both areas can generate positive synergies in lessening destructive environmental footprints. Towards this goal, Building-Integrated Agriculture (BIA) is a field of study that optimizes applications of greenhouse farming methods inside or on top of buildings. Building on this field, vacant industrial-heritage warehouse structures found in abundance in American cities can become considerable underutilized urban space assets. More efficient solutions in their adaptive reuse, instead of typical new construction investigated in BIA for greenhouse farming, can make the field further ecological. While economic and social aspects of sustainability in warehouse adaptive reuse are to some extent addressed, environmental aspects demand further investigations. More specifically, heating greenhouses efficiently for larger quantity edible productions and more profitability coupled with enhanced day-lighting in warehouses remain a challenge. As an initial effort to assess the proposed idea, this paper presents the process and results of a warehouse prototype’s whole building energy simulation related to heating, cooling, solar radiation, and day-lighting. That is, evaluating its adaptive reuse feasibility for a high-performance BIA. Accordingly, building performance simulation software is applied to validate warehouse enclosure’s viability for sustainable retrofit practices via integrating energy efficient indoor vertical farming. After all, this study contributes to cross-disciplinary research engaging positive roles of urban agriculture in future of food distribution and accessibility, particularly, in food desert areas.