Serenity Farms is a 110-hectare greenhouse complex on the arid west coast of Saudi Arabia, built to grow food where water is the scarcest thing there is. It runs entirely on solar power and on desalinated seawater, so it draws nothing from the aquifers underneath it.
I led the design with a team of ecologists, engineers, and strategists, modelling the climate control, water treatment, and energy as one system. Once built, it feeds more than 180,000 people, saves 9.2 billion litres of water a year against open-field farming, a 95% cut, and supports up to 3,000 skilled jobs.
9.2 billion litres of water saved a year, growing food in a place that has almost none.