An autonomous helper for Istanbul's urban harvest.
The context. A studio project on a sustainable, bio-inspired future for Istanbul: bringing locally-produced, seasonal food to busy white-collar professionals, and cutting the waste of high-quality food between field and city.
My role. The research phase — mapping Istanbul's agricultural potential, the user and the system — was done with the studio team. From that brief, I designed AgroLift: the autonomous vehicle that moves the harvest from field to storage.
The research started from a simple gap: high-quality food produced near the city often spoils or loses value before it reaches the people who need it. Urban agriculture keeps production close, supports local growers and reduces waste.
We mapped where food can actually be grown around Istanbul, what the city can produce by region, and where the white-collar demand sits — the overlap defines where the system operates.
The harvest becomes a loop — farmer, urban harvest, local producers, white-collar workers — with AgroLift as the transport agent inside it. A daily scenario timeline set the vehicle's operating rhythm.
AgroLift is my design response. A double scissor-lift raises the crate platform to picking height and carries the load from field to storage. Translucent panels expose the lift mechanism, rugged cross-pattern wheels handle soft ground, and oval light signatures communicate the vehicle's state to people working around it.
