Balcony Wormery Makes Urban Composting Easy and Fun

Hey urban composters, this one is for you! During our stay here in Dublin we had the chance to chat with the guys of ABGC, a design and architecture firm that has its office in the city's South Studios. They showed us some of recent projects, including a little wormery called WormWorks. This urban balcony composter drew our immediate attention as it perfectly combines the recycling philosophy with a-do-it-yourself mentality plus great design on top of that.

The WormWorks system makes use worms to turn of left-overs of fruits and vegetables into nutrient soil and ‘worm tea’. Composting is obviously not something new. Nevertheless, re-using food left-overs is something that’s mainly feasible for people living in houses with huge gardens. The composters they use are all the same and amazingly ugly. Made of dark green plastic they do their best to not stand out between the plants, but because of their size and material they mostly fail. This was one of the reasons for ABGC to come up with this design.

WorkWorks wormery by ABGC

“We’ve been keen vermiculture enthusiasts for a number of years and have Can-o-Worms set up at our homes and in the car park behind our office — we feed the worms with our kitchen organic waste and they create highly fertile soil and liquid fertilizer. The problem is that the bins are not made locally, and are plastic and ugly so you always want to hide them and they’re not always desirable for small outdoor spaces. We wanted to design a wormery as something beautiful, a piece of furniture that could contribute to a small urban garden or apartment balcony. So we focused on the joinery details and ours is constructed of stacked dovetail jointed hardwood trays, with thin sheet stainless steel bases. The system is modular so if your trays are filling up too fast you can add more. The lower section is lined to collect the rich leachate from the upper trays and has simple brass tap to one side to drain off this worm ‘tea’ which is great organic liquid fertiliser when diluted 1:10 with water.”

ABGC’s wormery is a small, neatly designed object that’s able to double as a herbs planter. This invention is great for those people with restricted space for green hobbies like gardening and composting. Its size perfectly fits the living circumstances of the urbanites, who often live in apartments with small balconies.

WorkWorks wormery by ABGC
WorkWorks wormery by ABGC
WorkWorks wormery by ABGC

The wormery consists of four trays on top of each other. The lid is a miniature green roof which completes the installation and makes this part of the garden proper. If you’re planting annuals you can drop them under the lid at the end of the season whereupon the worms will turn them into soil for next years plants. The plant tray lid could be something ornamental or edible, the tray itself is 11 cm deep — a perfect plant pot. The wormery comes with a set of worms and can be used straight away. Both the compost and the ‘worm tea’ are very nutricient. And best of all, the wormery doesn’t smell.

PUC × Pivot Dublin

In April 2013, Pivot Dublin invited us to spend two weeks in the Irish capital. We hopped from district to district to fully experience, explore and report trends, stories and ideas right from Dublin’s vibrant design community.

Building Cities on Philanthropy

The City of Dublin has launched plans for a new central City Library at Parnell Square. This new 21st century cultural hotspot will help launch the northern part of Dublin’s downtown as a new cultural quarter. In times of financial crisis it's hard to find money for new public buildings, particularly in the cultural scene and in a city like Dublin. What’s interesting about this project, initiated by Dublin's City Architect Ali Grehan, is that it is financially made possible by a group of philanthropists. They will pay to make the plans and have committed to raise funding for the execution of the whole project. Peter Collins is Managing Director at Kennedy Wilson Europe. He represents the group of philanthropists that will pay for the massive building. We spoke to him about the library and asked him about philanthropy in urbanism.

Dublin Adopts Urban Hacking as a City-Making Tool

During our two-week Blogger in Residency in Dublin earlier this month we discovered quite an innovative approach to urban planning and development that other cities around the globe could learn from. Several departments within the Irish capital's City Council have adopted urban hacking and interventionism tactics as serious tools to improve public spaces.

Modular Urban Rooftop Farm Uses Only Recycled Materials

On top of the roof of the Chocolate Factory in Dublin, a remarkable rooftop farm is being planted. Following the example of other great urban rooftop farms around the world, the Chocolate Factory farm is completely modular, made from only recycled materials, and is based on the concept of composting. This way, the small scale farm that looks out over the city of Dublin integrates an entire food system, from waste to food, on one roof.