The UK’s First Urban-Farm-To-Table Pizzeria
Green Lab was commissioned by Exposure, a global independent creative communications agency, to imagine, design, build and host a unique food experience in London as part of Project Plant; a Samsung initiative to explore and communicate how technology can inspire urban communities to grow and consume food more sustainably.
Over a period of just 10 weeks our team designed the entire end to end experience working along side Exposure, Samsung UK, Purezza and the Film Shed to develop an entire working indoor urban farm with tomatoes, mushrooms, basil and rocket all growing inside four giant, six metre geo-desic domes.
Project Plant was hosted at The Film Shed, Hackney with a subterranean urban farm hidden inside. Over a three-day sell out event we saw 2000+ visitors experience the UK’s first urban ‘farm to table’ pizzeria; picking their own pizza toppings, as they traversed each connected dome, with the Green Lab team acting as ambassadors answering questions about food, technology and urban farming; and once participants left the final dome, they would be be invited to visit the Purezza pizza van with their selected toppings to be turned into delicious and award winning sourdough vegan pizzas!
Project Plant was an experiment in growing food with fewer resources, an exploration as to how we might solve multiple problems around our current unsustainable food production system. The key narrative was focused on how small space growing can contribute to improving how we are able to grow food locally and with minimal resources, using technology as means of control and way to monitor and manage crops.
Green Lab was instrumental in designing and fabricating all the hydroponics systems and geodesic dome materials from scratch using low cost materials and the generous workshop spaces provided by BLOQS, a makerspace in North London. In addition to growing 1200kg of mushrooms, 3000 basil plants, 500 rocket plants and 300 vine tomatoes for the event – juggling project management, technology design, project logistics, build and managing the fastest event break down we have ever seen – 4 hours!
Project Plant was an incredible event.
The project was awarded the best B2C Brand Experience 2022 by Campaign Experience Awards.