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This year, one of the finalists created a hotel design centered on aquaponics - a system that combines raising fish and cultivating plants in water. Excretions from the fish can increase the toxicity of the water, but this water is fed to the plant system, where bacteria turn the by-products intro nutrients for the plants. The water is purified by the time it returns to the aquatic system at the end of the closed cycle.
Varinot & Varinot Architectes, a firm based in France, wants to apply this closed loop model to hotels by recycling rainwater throughout the building. The circulation would provide water to aquariums, flowers, and vertical produce farms within the hotel.
Radical Innovation Award winners will be announced on October 3. In the meantime, take a look at some of the renderings for the Aquaponic Experience Hotel.
The architects' proposal calls for a modular design that could adapt to different skylines around the world. It could be a smaller building in Paris or a tall tower in New York, for example.
A rooftop restaurant would serve local food, and breeding tanks on different floors would feature sturgeons, crawfish, tilapia, trout, and more.
Each room would include an aquarium that would provide water for various flowers and herbs.
In line with the aquaponics model, the vertical culture system on each floor — where produce is grown in vertically-stacked layers —would filter the water before it is injected back into the fish tank.
The hotel's vertical cultures would include mushrooms, tomatoes, eggplant, melons, lettuce, strawberries, and grapes.
From homemade caviar to vegetable salads and crawfish dishes, the architects say the hotel's production of fish and produce could each feed 60 people per day.
It is unclear if the Aquaponic Experience Hotel will ever be created, but the competition finalists will all meet with industry experts to discuss developing their ideas further.
