The bio-digital curtain that cleans air

Ugly and smelly it might be, but when used as part of bio-conscious architecture, algae can combat air pollution and do a lot more.

ecoLogic founders Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto behind photo.Synthetica algae curtain in Dublin Castle
Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto. Source: ecoLogicStudio

A giant curtain with a green snake-like design pattern shrouds the main façade of the Printworks building in Dublin Castle. To tourists ambling through the Irish capital, it might appear to be part of a conceptual installation.

But this is no simple adornment.

Made of 16 modules each measuring 2x7 metres, the material is in fact a bioplastic container that incubates microalgae that lower the building’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The structure uses sunlight to feed the unicellular organisms housed inside it. They, in turn, capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a rate of 1kg a day, equivalent to that of 20 large trees.

The innovative design, unveiled during the climate summit in November 2018, is the brainchild of Italian architects Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto, whose environmentally-friendly mission is to turn “the dark side” of ecology on its head.

“Nature is a complex loop where death, decay and bacteria are part of the system. We consider certain elements like microalgae to be smelly, ugly, dangerous or problematic – and we have an abundance of microalgae due to climate change,” Pasquero, who together with Poletto runs London-based ecoLogicStudio practice, tells mega.

“But on the other hand, it is an incredible substance. Microalgae can absorb carbon dioxide and produce energy and food. So how come the ‘incredible’ part stays in the lab and nobody sees it? How can we harvest it in our landscape? This is where our architecture can be an interface between man and environment.”

photo.Synthetica algae curtain in Dublin Castle
Algae Curtain in Dublin. Source: ecoLogicStudio
Urban Algae Folly in Milan Expo by ecoLogicStudio
Algae Folly at the Milan Expo. Source: ecoLogicStudio

The living curtain is just one of several of the duo’s bioconscious designs. At the Milan Expo in 2015, Pasquero and Poletto presented a building canopy filled with water and spirulina, a blue-green algae which is a popular superfood packed full of protein, vitamins and antioxidants.

The structure – which uses an intricate web of digital sensors to harness the algae’s properties - sucked up nearly 4 kg of CO2 from the air per day while spewing out out 2kg of oxygen in return. Given growth of edible algae inside, the canopy produced the equivalent in protein of 2kg of meat per day.

Microalgae are some of the oldest and most resilient forms of photosynthetic organism. While they provide renewable and sustainable sources of biofuels and food ingredients, their rapid growth can damage coastal and marine ecosystems.

This is especially true in the Baltic Sea, where a combination of climate change, agricultural nutrient run-offs and urban sewage have led to an overgrowth of microalgae that starves the ocean of oxygen. Scientists estimate these “dead zones” extend across 70,000km2 – an area almost twice the size of Denmark.1

Instead of eradicating microalgae and other microorganisms, Pasquero wants to use her responsive and interactive architecture to encourage us to co-exist with these non-anthropocenic, or non-human, forms of life.

“Bacteria and micro-organisms are able to reprocess waste and generate a new high tech matter like bioplastic or microbial cellulose that can be used by human being. CO2 may be negative for us, but it’s good for photosynthetic organisms. It’s a nutrient," says Pasquero, who is also Professor of Landscape Architecture at Innsbruck University.

"It’s a different dynamic. Our architecture can help us understand this dynamic and visualise it.”

XenoDerma on display at Pompidou Centre in Paris
XenoDerma on display at Pompidou Centre. Source: Urban Morphogenesis Lab at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London

Living Machine

Pasquero is also exploring ways to integrate other living organisms into sustainable design and construction.

For example, she has used spider silk, a fibre that’s as tough as stainless steel in comparative density, but far more environmentally friendly.

Pasquero and her team examined how Asian Fawn tarantulas spin a web. They then reprogrammed the behaviour and the production of silk within a 3D-printed structure called “XenoDerma”, which was recently displayed at the Pompidou Centre in Paris.

In the future, re-programmed spider silk could be used to engineer 3D printed architectural structures that can become biosensors and therefore be responsive to external stimuli, such as weather or traffic.

It was the pioneering French architect of the 1920s Le Corbusier who famously said: "A house is a machine for living in."

But Pasquero wants to take the concept of functional design a step further. “We want to engineer a shift from a ‘Machine for Living’ to a ‘Living Machine’,” she says. “So that it becomes a living architecture.”

[1] https://www.biogeosciences.net/15/3975/2018/bg-15-3975-2018.html