In direct response to the 2005 EU Clean Air Strategy, a London- and Berlin-based design firm called Elegant Embellishments (http://www.elegantembellishments.net/) has developed "a decorative, three-dimensional architectural tile" that can reduce vehicular air pollution, including nitrous oxide and ground-level ozone. The tiles – algorithmically designed and modular in assembly – can thus "rapidly improve urban environments in terms of air quality and visual appeal."
According to the company's own recent press release:
"The tiles are coated with titanium dioxide (TiO2), a pollution-fighting technology that is activated by ambient daylight. TiO2 is a photo-catalyst already known for its self-cleaning and germicidal qualities; it requires only small amounts of naturally occurring UV light and humidity to effectively reduce air pollutants into harmless amounts of carbon dioxide and water. When positioned near pollution sources, the tiles neutralise NOx and VOCs (volatile organic compounds) directly where they are generated. They transform previously inert urban surfaces into active surfaces, re-appropriate polluted spaces for safer pedestrian use, and invert problem spaces – dark, polluted, uninhabitable – to benevolent spaces that benefit communities."
The physical design of the tiles is itself meant as a visual provocation--the resulting grid resembles a kind of "crystalline ivy, sculpturally attached to the otherwise bare walls of urban downtowns," where it assumes "endless varieties of physical structures." So the more pollution a city has, the more of this material you have placed about the city to fight that pollution.
This of course begs the obvious question - which virus do you choose? Pollution or this ever-growing matrix of white plastic? It seems to me that the better choice may be to fight the causes of the pollution rather than trying to mop it up with this stuff.
posted by clintor @ 12:40 PM
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