What is more sustainable and available than air itself?
As part of the Welsh School of Architecture’s 2019 Vertical Studio, we were asked to choose, investigate and design with a sustainable building material of our choice. We chose air and began imagining all the design possibilities: an elevated floor, translucent walls, floating furniture, a roof in suspension... We quickly came to realize that the amount of energy required to pressurize the air to concretise these ideas made the project heavily unsustainable. After meeting with the head of the department of fluid mechanics at Cardiff University, we designed a sustainable way of harvesting solar energy through the use of natural convection. A combination of heat storing pebbles and quartz would create the airflow necessary to redirect the raindrops away from a centre point, creating a space sheltered from the falling water, without needing a roof.
One of four collaborators - responsible for the concept proposal and mathematical resolution
Team: Ksenia D., Augusta F., Ana-Maria T.
Conceptual digital drawing of the proposal inhabited
Conceptual digital drawing of the proposal in “context”
Diagrams illustrating the mechanism of the air roof
