What does a Roman emperor’s craving for cucumbers have to do with feeding eight billion people? How did a 15th-century Korean cookbook quietly invent heated agriculture centuries before Europe’s glass palaces? And how did Victorian spectacle, world wars, hydroponic ambition, and Dutch engineering transform the greenhouse from aristocratic indulgence into global infrastructure?
Join John and Patrick as they trace the extraordinary history of climate control in the service of fresh produce – from Tiberius’s selenite-covered cucumber beds, to the heated ondol systems of the Joseon Dynasty, the imperial glasshouses of Palace of Versailles and Royal Botanic Gardens, and the hydroponic battlefields of the Second World War.
Because this is not just a story about architecture. It is a story about anxiety, empire, science, and survival. About humanity’s refusal to let winter – or war, or geography – dictate what ends up on our plates.
From Roman villas to vertical farms… this is the history of the greenhouse, and the quiet revolution that changed how the world grows its food.
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In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
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