Initially, I planned to create a sustainability guide for my senior capstone project. I wanted to start off by educating people about the farming processes that occur in the UAE that aim towards sustainability. I visited a farm in Sharjah; Vigitech, where the employees gave me a tour around their farm. First I learnt about Hydroponics and their use of pipes to navigate water across different channels to reduce water waste. They also monitered temperatures and CO2 levels to reduce their waste. In Addition, different light wavelenghts would be used such as infra red or infra blue to reduce light waste when certain colors in the rainbow spectrum where important for the growth of the plant. I also got to learn about what plants were grown in season. For the outside farms, they used non-energy methods such as a material that reflects air so that it would help in cooling the plants. It was nice to see how the UAE is encouraging society to become sustainable by allowing such farms to establish lessons and farm fields in schools. Overall, the experience was vey eye opening. The first design afterwards was illustrating some of the images that I took on the farm.
