Urban Respiratory System

“We shape our building, and afterwards our buildings shape us.”

– Winston Churchill

Thesis issue:

As urbanization continues to displace an increasing amount of vegetation and green spaces, the urban environment is losing its ability to filter and purify air that has been rendered visible through pollution.

"Architecture has been and remains a significant feature of our perception, interpretation and interaction with pollution."

- David Gissen

Impact of architecture:

Architecture can serve as a component to improve the quality of air and by extension life through an integration of effluent removal and atmospheric filtration systems with the structure of architecture.

Strategies:

1. Urban Respiratory System – Similar to the function of our respiratory system, architecture can be designed to not only breathe but also be able to extract what is needed and exhaust the waste effectively. Instead of adding pollutants to the atmosphere, the role of architecture can be inverted to filter and clean air through the implementation of various tactics such as a solar chimney in a double-skin façade-like-system that can act as an immediate filter barrier.

•         Metabolism in architecture: immediate exchange of ecological matter through architectural components such as the wall

“Architecture is not inert objects but they are a kind of biological organism”

- Dennis Dollens

2. Interior and Exterior Hybrid – The design of a building needs to consider both the exterior and interior environment holistically and not as separate entities. This goes beyond the mere physicality of inside and outside but instead, architecture is an integral part in the cycle process of changing atmospheric environments. Spaces do not need to be physically connected in an open and closed sense but rather connected as a system where the enclosed environment directly impacts both the interior and exterior equally. This system can begin to look into effective ways to exhaust their intake and control of the enclosed environment (stale air, carbon dioxide, pollutants, effluent waste) so that the exterior environment does not become expendable for the sake of an artificial interior environment.

•         Technological ecology: creating and interior ‘nature’
•         Enclosing space while maintaining the feeling of the outdoors: including lighting variations and fresh breeze

"Strains of sustainable and green design merely reaffirm that separation between humans and nature, even while seeming to close it...most green architecture spatialises nature either as a neatly bounded territory where, in isolation, it shall regenerate."

- Javier Arbona  

3. Fluidity – The organization of interior space is a strategic approach towards effective air movement that can result in a decrease of mechanical systems. Instead of physical separations in programming, spaces can actively expand and contract based on air movement to form the most efficient layout to circulate air.

“Conventional approaches to architecture rely on fixed spatial configurations with a limited set of prosthetic mechanisms such as windows, heating and cooling systems, skins and surface characteristics that respond to variability in primarily weather, functional and aesthetic conditions. Such approaches use passive techniques such as orientation, materials, geometry, and color to resist variability in conditions. Active approaches, on the other hand, offer a broader range of techniques that rely on digital technologies, interactive surfaces, sensors, actuators, kinetic devices and algorithms that help to actively mediate variability in human behavior, weather and other local conditions."

- Mahesh Dass

Schematic Sketches: