The desert city of Abu Dhabi is home to more than 800,000 people who rely on five huge desalination plants for fresh water and on imports for fresh fruit and vegetables. The Italian architecture firm STUDIOMOBILE says both these problems could be solved with its vertical seawater farm.

In this towering scheme, five "cocoon greenhouses" would be fixed on a central stalk. In each cocoon, seawater would be turned into water vapor that would cool and humidify the greenhouses, and would also be distilled to produce freshwater. While seawater greenhouses have already been tested in several pilot projects, STUDIOMOBILE's proposal dramatically super-sizes the idea.