To understand Singapore’s urban farming landscape, we engaged in interviews and surveys with farmers and vegetable consumers. Integrating these interactions with our research, we pinpointed critical touchpoints and pain points to drive our design process toward user-centric solutions. In this process, we focused on three personas, each highlighting concerns that steered our focus:

• Farmers: challenges in efficiently monitoring plant growth and scaling up operations
• Consumers: frustration over the limited variety of locally available crops at affordable prices
• Manufacturers: significant setup efforts and costs, coupled with high workforce requirements for maintenance.

These insights converge around the central issue of financial sustainability, exacerbated by Singapore’s elevated land and labor costs, alongside the expenses associated with urban farming. We identified artificial lighting to be one of the highest contributors, especially in Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) solutions, due to persistent use of artificial light. We aimed to minimize this by turning to natural light as it is consistently available in Singapore and not afforded in seasonal climates, where CEA solutions are developed.

Based on the insights from our research, we aimed to design an easily adoptable CEA pod that has a minimal physical footprint and optimises energy consumption by maximising the use of daylight to reduce the financial burdens of urban farming. We limited our scope to address three critical aspects: limited land spac, high energy consumption, and high barrier to entry.

We deconstructed our solution into four main components that integrates expertise from architecture, engineering, and computer science: 

1. Adaptable pod with light pipes
   
2. Modular and stackable hydroponic racks
3. Autonomous rack movement, guided by a custom algorithm
4. A remote management web app