Inhabitat
Solar-powered Ring Garden marries desalination and agriculture for drought-stricken California
August 25, 2016
by Tafline Laylin
"With roughly 80 percent of California’s already-scarce water supply going to agriculture, it’s crucial for the state to embrace new technologies that shrink the amount of water required to grow food. Alexandru Predonu has designed an elegant solution that uses solar energy to power a rotating desalination plant and farm that not only produces clean drinking water for the city of Santa Monica, but also food crops – including algae. A finalist of this year’s Land Art Generator Initiative competition, a site-specific biennial design competition that has inspired world-renowned designs like The Pipe and Energy Duck, Ring Garden is capable of churning out 16 million gallons of clean water, 40,000 pounds of aeroponic crops, and 11,000 pounds of spirulina biomass for livestock feed."