May I be the first to say... AWESOME! I love this idea!

I don't care how impractical it is... just simply Awesome!

There are so many wonderful, crazy, great construction, auto, energy "ideas" out there when will we step up and make these a reality??

What a breathtaking, awesomely, absolutely stupid and ugly idea.

That is unremittingly ghastly

I'll bet they rewrite their laws on orders from the Kennedy Klan.

only is California can they make a building not only look ugly as hell, but at the same time create a building that is utterly stupid.

California and its residents need to learn how to stay with in their means.

- uh, I don't believe Boston is in California, dude.

"I'll bet they rewrite their laws on orders from the Kennedy Klan."

Eerily if you follow that to its conclusion it the Kalifornia Kennedy Klan. Hmmmm..... and I would, for once, agree with them that this would need laws passed to stop it in its tracks in its current ugly abominable form.

I watched The Matrix last night. This gives me the fear....

it looks ugly, boo-hoo. Where I live there is a government building that looks like the designer was on an acid trip. Totally out of place in an 18th century style town. The fix was a facade of trees. The answer here is easy make a glass facade to disguise it as a skyscraper. It would blend in faster than you can say Boston Creme Pie.

I hope tax payers aren't paying for these idiots.

This just goes to prove that the whole eco-fad is more about looking modern and eco friendly than actually being eco friendly.

The pods are retarded for growing things. Why are they not glass, or clear plastic at least (they make that for greenhouse roofs, looks almost like normal opaque but lets in most of the light)?

Why does the whole idea revolve around gigantic super-expensive robot arms that would consume more energy than the building could ever generate?

It would be so simple to turn a building's skeleton into a smart farm. Growth ledges all up the east and west, A large rainwater collection system both on the roof and ponds for the same purpose on the ground. Lower light plants growing more to the sides and interior (light would still get through the gaps and there are plenty of things that are good to eat but don't need direct sunlight). You could cover the whole outside in cheap clear plastic to make it one big greenhouse, maybe even go so far as to put some sun following mirror arrays along the north and south to collect more light there or redirect it to the interior.

It would be so easy to make an idea like this work, even be a profitable farm and good source of fresh food. Bio fuel needs massive tracts of land to be profitable, but growing the city's food in the city is a much smarter form of conservation anyway. The guys who came up with this are made of 100% pure fail, just trying to tag onto the green bandwagon, where anything that's got the label eco-friendly is "BRILLIANT!"

@bob, here I thought I was original. My two story greenhouse works, but you can't make the building too thick or the floor covers the plants below. I speak from experience, to not make it a loss I just put shade plants there. The morning sun ones on the east and afternoon in the west. The idea works but not with buildings blocking the sun.

Ok, that is just a bad artists rendering. The one Popsci had was much better. The origional consept for this design comes form MIT and Stanford, and could actually work. What they have in the picture is totally unrealistic and lacks functionality.