NASA-Inspired Green Wheel Lets You Grow Your Own Food Indoors

Growing your own food is the first step on the self-sufficiency journey, and it can never hurt learn having fresh food close at hand. But as we New Yorkers know, it’s not always easy to create a lush garden on the fire escape. To tackle this subject, Italian studio DesignLibero created The Green Wheel, a rotary, hydroponic garden that provides a constant supply of micro-herbs and salad. Its futuristic aesthetics are sleek and modern; in fact, it takes direct inspiration from a 1980s NASA idea.

This revolutionary rotary hydroponic concept was first developed by NASA with the aim to provide fresh produce inside spacecrafts, but unfortunately that idea was never developed further. Many years later, though, the Milan-based studio picked up where NASA left off and adapted the original concept so it could work in anyone’s kitchen, not just inside spacecrafts.

The futuristic wheel will help anyone grow their own food indoors and avoid supermarkets, but also, evade all the waste that comes with that — CO2 emissions from transportation, plastic bags, and packaging, to name a few.

The hydroponic garden consists of a wheel that grasps plants by the roots and spins them around completing a circle in one house. Right at the bottom of the ride, a reservoir feeds water to the roots (which are contained inside a coco fiber vase), while during the rest of the journey the greens happily soak up the LED light. The circular design not only allows the object to spin around, but it actually fits more plants with a lower energy cost.

The flourishing wheel can be remotely controlled with a Smartphone or tablet through an easy, intuitive application that can manage the amount of light and its temperature, as well as provide alerts when the water needs a refill.

See more futuristic designs by DesignLibero here.

[Via Experimenta]

RELATED:

• Nomad Is a Portable Herb Planter Perfect for City Living
• Mediterranean-Style CarRem Trolley Lets Restaurant Guests Pick Fresh Herbs at the Table
• Easily Outfit Your Home in Greenery with Plant Wall Design’s Vertical Garden