This ongoing project is a photo essay about fruit walls and greenhouses, about European efforts to grow fruit and vegetables by modifying microclimates through architecture.

Before refrigerated transport, cities grew their own food nearby and shipped it in by river. London had the market gardens of Middlesex and the Thames Valley; Berlin had its fruit-and-vegetable belt on the Rieselfelder ("sewage farms"); Milan had the Ortaglie gardens linked to the city by the Navigli canals. Today this kind of local production is either tiny in scale or forgotten altogether, though a few promising projects are trying to bring it back.

The photographs below trace what remains of Paris's historic regional production: the Chasselas grapes of Thomery, the peach walls of Montreuil, and the Plaine des Vertus in Saint-Denis.

I've also photographed two of today's intensive production zones: the "sea of plastic" in Almería, where a third of Europe's vegetables are grown, and the "city of glass" in the Netherlands, a country that exports more food by value than the United States.

In the essay to follow, I'll argue that, for historical and economic reasons, Europe now produces its fruit and vegetables in the wrong places, with the wrong architecture. Almería has the most sun but the least water, produces enormous plastic waste, and sits far from consumers in northern Europe. The Netherlands has little sun, so its greenhouses run on natural gas heat for most of the year — and glass buildings are inefficient to heat. The result: growing a single hothouse tomato can produce one to two times its own weight in CO2.

I have solutions to propose, but you'll have to wait for the article. For now, enjoy the photos and thanks for visiting.

EL MAR DE plástico, Almeria

Murs à Pêches DE MONTREUIL

DE STAD VAN GLAS, WESTLAND