‘Square Greens’ by SEVE makes growing food in kitchens sustainable and effortless

‘Growing your own food’ is a concept that has been increasingly gaining popularity among newer generations. Rising eco-consciousness, a commitment to eating food free of pesticides and chemicals, and most importantly, the desire to eat fresh food—there can be nothing fresher than the food you pluck straight out of your own garden—are some leading reasons for it. ‘Square Greens,’ a compact greenhouse developed by Italian design group SEVE (comprising Eugenio Costa, Simone Centonze, Edoardo Graci, and Valeria Cattoni) aims to make growing your own greens easy, in a compact, easy-to-use, and accessible design model.

Gardening and traditional cultivation have been around for centuries, but the alarming rates of the human population, as well as their increased meat consumption, have been exceedingly straining for our planet. 46 per cent of Earth’s habitable land is presently used for cultivation, and if we stick to traditional farming methods, this number will keep escalating. To increase gross production to save crops and plantations that are being ruined by pest and disease infestation, pesticides and fertilisers have become a necessity. Organic farming, while healthier, also requires an incredible amount of resources. While these facts make the situation look exceedingly grim, human ingenuity has always found brilliant ways of displaying resilience. Hydroponics—the process of growing plants without soil—is one of the most sustainable methods that has been gaining the attention of many in this regard.

Hydroponics, in tandem with having exponentially higher yields, requires a fraction of the water requirement when compared to traditional farming. Yet, the need for technical expertise and equipment maintenance, along with the expense of being set up, makes it inaccessible to a large group of people. With ‘Square Greens,’ the team of Italian designers at SEVE has imagined a novel way to produce and consume fresh food. The minimalist industrial design looks every bit futuristic in its details, while its friendly form makes it an easy fit for kitchens. One of the key features of the product design is its modularity, wherein, a number of units can be stacked together to make use of precious square footage in the urban households that ‘Square Greens’ is intended for. The product designers claim that the product is a high-performance greenhouse that can produce three complete meals in just four days.

The brilliance of ‘Square Greens’ shines not only in its efficiency but in how easy it is to use. Apart from the highly compact greenhouse, the other part of the modular design is an A5-sized ‘pod’ which can fit directly into it. These pods are inserted into the protrusions inside the unit, where a spring mechanism activates the water flow, allowing the cotton inside the pods to get wet, allowing the seeds to germinate. The way this system is designed is to generate a full, fresh meal. A significant challenge for the user would be to gauge the progress of growth for the greens. A proposed solution for that was creating pods with a status bar that changes colour with water. ‘Square Greens’ is clean and seamless, and features the logo, and legal indications, along with an energy plug situated in a single, small square on the back of the greenhouse.

The process for the sustainable design prototype started with a solo nylon print, containing two frames split in half with all the necessary parts of the greenhouse. Later, a water pump and water-resistant LED strips were added. While testing the pods, the industrial designers discovered that it takes 8-10 days for the greens to grow, and that made the product highly ineffective. This led the creators from Italy to engineer a ‘secret system’ that assured full growth, as fast as possible.

Instead of attempting to target large-scale production through hydroponics, ‘Square Greens’ by SEVE makes growing your own greens easily accessible while attesting to sustainability. With the ever-reducing sizes of homes, this product makes the farm-to-table model available and accessible to an urban population who are hard-pressed to grow plants via traditional means. While the revolution of agriculture has been monumental in the success and proliferation of human civilisation, the need to find methods that reduce our ecological impact is pertinent, now more than ever. An increasing number of people moving towards alternative farming methods to grow their own food will ultimately result in a significant reduction of land use for agricultural purposes, which in turn, allows for more land to be reclaimed into forests, remarkably attesting to practicable routes that will help impact our battle against climate change.