Green Towers of State College is sprouting with a suite of designs intended to “reconnect people to nature and to their food.”
The startup grew from a Penn State undergraduate project — the plan was to convert old shipping containers into vertical aquaponic greenhouses (a sustainable method for raising plants and fish) that could be shipped internationally and fit tight urban locations. Unfortunately, after building a prototype, the team determined that the market demand just wasn’t there.
Instead, Mike Zaengle, who is finishing a five-year Bachelor of Architecture degree at Penn State, and partners Dustin Betz, Jared Yarnall-Schane and Jon Gumble, “pivoted by shrinking the science of aquaponics to a scale consumers could manage and afford,” explains Zaengle.
Today Green Towers offers “Living Furniture” comprised of self-contained ecosystems of plants and aquarium life. The Living Table, available at the company’s website and on Houzz.com, is handcrafted from Pennsylvania cherry hardwood and arrives fully assembled. Just add water, fish and seeds.
Green Towers also offers “Living Interiors,” customized, aquaponic-focused interior design services, and “Rotating Living Walls,” a space-saving system for greenhouses that promises to double per-square-foot yields.
According to Zaengle, the company already has several commercial interior design customers, has built a large-scale aquaponic greenhouse for private use, and sold several Living Tables.
“We see a huge value in our custom interior design work,” he adds. “Businesses and retirement homes have shown great interest in our work and reached out… Interior designers and architects bring us on as design consultants and have us do a custom piece around their initial design.”
Green Towers expects to hire an engineer in the next six months and another designer if its custom interiors work continues to grow. And the company is developing two new products: a “Living Wall” and an urban beehive.
Source: Mike Zaengle, Green Towers
Writer: Elise Vider