It may never get built, but it sure is cool-looking: The architects, designers and planners at Seattle-based Mithun have produced the farm of the future, a multi-story building that incorporates crops and chicken coops, and that would rise in the heart of downtown Seattle.

The concept won "Best of Show" in the Cascadia Region Green Building Council's Living Building Challenge. Mithun, known internationally for its focus on sustainable development and willingness to push the bounds of building design, envisions a "Center for Urban Agriculture," a building, located on a .72-acre site, that includes fields for growing vegetables and grains, greenhouses, rooftop gardens and even a chicken farm.

Imagine waking up in the morning, grabbing coffee and then cracking a few freshly laid eggs for your omelet. 

The building also would run completely independent of city water, providing its own drinking water partly by collecting rain via the structure's 31,000-square-foot rooftop rainwater collection area. The water would be treated and recycled on site. And photovoltaic cells would produce nearly 100 percent of the building's electricity.

And not to worry, potential urban-farm dwellers. Mithun would make room for humans, as well as chickens. The site would provide 318 small studio, one- and two-bedroom affordable apartments (no word on the mitigation of farm smells wafting into your room). The entry level would feature a cafe serving organic foods grown on site. Produce grown at the site would be distributed to local grocers, saving even more energy by reducing transportation miles.

In a news release, Bert Gregory, president and CEO of Mithun, says that concepts such as the "Center for Urban Agriculture" are "the best way to uncover innovative solutions to today's problems."

Or tomorrow's.