FutureAir

Author: Simone Rothman

Ross Lovegrove FORBES Feature!

September 2016

Hot off the press!

Check out FutureAir co-founder, Ross Lovegrove’s feature on Forbes.com this past week. The article details Ross’s innovative perspective on the relationship between design and emerging technologies, drawing inspiration from “the logic and beauty of nature,” while also being “informed by a social and environmental consciousness”. Not only is Lovegrove’s design sense beautiful in its organic essentialism, but it is also always an answer to deeper questions about the “intelligent use of resources,” and the material value of technological advancement. As the article notes, Ross’ futurist perspective has ever-evolving manifestations in such creations as “the Sony Walkman, Apple Computers, KEF Muon loudspeaker, leather luggage for Louis Vuitton, and Swarovski Crystal Aerospace concept solar car.” The article ultimately culminates in a call to action, referencing Lovegrove’s work with FutureAir as an expression of his desire to protect the earth we live on today.

Revisiting Indigenous Air Cooling in Jaipur

August 2016

Located just outside of Jaipur, India, the Amer Fort, also known as the Amer Palace, was built in 1592 by Raja Man Singh, and remains in pristine condition today. Like many Indian palaces, buildings, and urban dwellings, the Amer Fort still benefits from some of the most traditional and exquisite air cooling technologies. By creating different rooms and places for different climates and temperatures, the Fort’s architects planned for the seasonal use of varying spaces throughout the palace grounds. For example, the “Pleasure garden” is located in the center of a lake and is used for exceptionally hot summer days. If the palace’s dwellers or visitors become uncomfortable outdoors, they can migrate to the center of the lake to cool off. Similarly, inside the Amer Fort movable screens and curtains were used to keep spaces like the emperor’s throne as cool as the open lake. As Vinod Gupta, Assistant Professor of Architecture at the School of Planning & Architecture in New Delhi, writes, “It is said that in summer there were three sets of screens used, two of them grass mats kept wet by sprinkling of water. Heavy quilted curtains were suspended in place of these screens in winter.” Additionally, one of the most fascinating air cooling technologies employed at the Amer Fort are the apertures, some of which are no larger than one centimeter, designed to let in air which then gets cooled within the larger structure of the building by filtering through an underground (and therefore shaded) tunnel where air flows over shaded water (pictured) to keep it cool.

While beginning to write this post I found myself struggling to employ the appropriate lexicon to describe the concept of air cooling without air conditioning, an area of study important to FutureAir but still somewhat obscure to an average city dweller like myself. As Gupta writes, the energy crisis has spurred the accumulation of a vast body of literature about “passive cooling systems,” or technology that cools air naturally and sustainably, but he argues that the strategies employed by indigenous Indian builders and architects remain the most developed. According to Gupta, “When [modern] architects talk of passive cooling, it is as if the maintenance of certain specified temperatures in a building is an end in itself. On the other hand, the indigenous builder could not care less if the building was cool or warm so long as people could be comfortable within or without the building.” Without electricity indigenous Indian architects used their knowledge of physics and the climate in which they lived to strive for comfortable and utilitarian structures, which are, as a result, quite beautiful.

REFERENCES
“Amer Fort.” Jaipur: The Pink City, August 24, 2016. http://www.jaipur.org.uk/forts-monuments/amber.html.
Gupta, Vinod. Energy and Habitat: Town Planning and Building Design for Energy Conservation. John Wiley & Sons (Asia) Pte Ltd, 1984.

Toward an Aesthetic of Air

August 2016

Mika Rottenberg’s work, The AC Trio, 2016 displayed at the Palais de Tokyo’s summer exhibition, Happy Sapien, inverts her viewer’s daily relationship to air conditioning by displaying the back end of three units inside the gallery space. By installing what most air conditioner users would consider to be the uglier side of their units which usually hang out of windows and always leak, Rottenberg isolates the grotesque aesthetics of the appliance by removing its usual function. With a small planter sitting atop the third unit in the trio, Rottenberg pokes fun at a meager attempt at integrating flora into the street-side of urban life. Below Rottenberg’s trio sit two pans atop hotplates and another plant. The filthy drip that every city dweller has experienced falls onto the pans that cook our food and the plants that hydrate our earth. The viewer may even begin to imagine the heat of the hotplates rising up into the units. By appealing to her viewer on a visceral level, calling to mind the use of daily objects and the flow of liquid, sound, and heat between them, Rottenberg begins to create an aesthetic of that which is omnipresent and yet invisible, air.

Ceiling Fan Composition #2, 2016, another of Rottenberg’s works displayed in Happy Sapien, is comprised of the colorful and vibrant display of the four fans behind the gallery wall. Like disco-balls rotating to an unseen rhythm, Rottenberg’s fans become mesmerizing, each illuminated by a different color of neon light. While the AC trio slowly drips filth, pushed out of someone’s window and spilling over into the gallery space, the fans spin together external to the gallery space in a neat composition. By encasing her fans outside of the room in which the viewer resides, Rottenberg, once again, removes their usual function. In so doing, she opens a space for the viewer to interact with air on an unusual level; aesthetically, rhythmically, and hopefully, with an eye toward the future of air.

Written by Tess Gruenberg and Francesca Michel

FutureAir x Boffi @ Civic Hall

August 2016

Civic Hall has a new addition to everyone’s favorite meeting room…a Boffi ceiling fan!

FutureAir’s sensing platform is now connected to a hand-crafted stunning ceiling fan to make it smarter while keeping guests cool in a sleek often occupied conference room where FutureAir has been collecting live data related to air quality and thermal comfort for the past few months.

FutureAir is piloting our own sensing technology in the beautiful Boffi ceiling fan – the first of a series of product partnerships, while we work on our own product line with Ross Lovegrove, FutureAir founder and renowned industrial designer.

Boffi is a high-end Italian kitchen and bathroom manufacturer, but happens to make what we think is the most beautiful fan on the market.

An Indoor Air Pollution Revolution

June 2016

Indoor air pollution is an invisible problem that most of us do not consider.  Given we spend 90% of our time indoors, we should be more interested in what is in the air we breathe. The actions we can take to improve it seem obvious as we become more air-conscious.

This week we were thrilled to see that the topic is getting more traction, with this “must read” Newsweek article, “Your Office Air is Killing You” by Douglas Main.

Here we have pulled out a few of the most poignant quotes from the article, but recommend that all of our readers read the article in full:

  • “Poisonous indoor air is almost completely ignored by the press, the public and those who bankroll scientific research—it gets about 100 times less research funding than outdoor air, even though the average American spends about 90 percent of the time inside.”
  • “Your life depends on good air. Every year, air pollution causes the premature deaths of between5.5 million and 7 million people, making it more deadly than HIV, traffic accidents and diabetes combined. The majority of these deaths—about 4 million—are caused by indoor air pollution, primarily in developing countries. But it takes a toll in developed countries as well. In Europe, for example, air pollution shortens the average life expectancy by nearly one year.”
  • “Particulate matter is the prime villain. The most lethal are the smallest particles (also known as PM2.5, for particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter, about one-third the diameter of a red blood cell), which are produced by combustion and household activities like cooking. These specks can get deep into the lungs, tarring the airways and weathering the heart, disrupting its ability to beat properly: Many studies have linked exposure to PM2.5 with heart attacks, cardiac arrhythmias, strokes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, worsened symptoms of asthma and an increased risk of respiratory illness. Worldwide, particulate matter contributes to about 800,000 premature deaths each year, according to the WHO, making it the 13th leading cause of death worldwide.”
  • “Architects are now specifically designing buildings with air in mind following a period of problematic construction and improper design.”

Given recent independent studies, published by Google (with help from Aclima) and Harvard that document the correlation between productivity and indoor air pollution, we are just beginning to understand the serious impact of poor air.

The article points out that while there are “a new generation of devices that measure air quality, many of which are priced at $200 or less and can quantify levels of particulate matter, VOCs, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and other gases,” but highlights a major problem in the nascent field, “many of the sensors are not very accurate, and every researcher Newsweek spoke with was careful to point out the limitations of inexpensive monitors.”

The process is not yet perfected, but we are happy that the conversation ensues. Let’s start taking control of the air that we breathe. Let’s make indoor air quality a priority and address the comfort problem while we’re at it!

Image: Newsweek

CASE takes FutureAir to Ghana

May 2016

Earlier this month, FutureAir teamed up with CASE, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Center for Architecture, Science and Ecology, to pilot FutureAir’s sensing platform in Accra, Ghana!

CASE has conducted extensive work and research on the Built Environment, evaluating “multiple environmental conditions alongside human health indicators in order to establish relationships between environmental factors.” CASE’s deep understanding of air quality and thermal comfort makes them an extremely valuable partner in our technology research and development.

CASE traveled to Accra, Ghana to do research in advance of a design/build for the Chale Wote Festival in August. Their project is deeply concerned with air quality, posing the question of how a building’s form, materials and systems all contribute to better, healthier air for its occupants. We provided them with three FutureAir sensors (code-named CASE #1 to #3) and a live link to our dashboard to collect data on indoor and outdoor air quality. This simultaneously helped us test our sensors while providing them with baseline readings for their project.

Here are some highlights, in their own words, from the trip:

May 12: CASE #1 is connected to the hostel’s wifi and running well next to the window. It just rained here and the air is relatively cool and clean. We expect a spike tomorrow morning with sun and traffic. Exciting to see.

May 14: CASE #2 is now live and mobile! We’ve made the second sensor work with a cell phone and battery. We don’t expect data quantity to be a problem relative to the limits of our Ghanaian data plans. We’ve termed CASE#2 “Operation Shark Fin” as it will be attached to a backpack sticking out like a fin to catch cross ventilation.

In addition, we dropped pins on a map at points of significant change of air conditions. This will help us correlate the data to location.As expected, battery life was the determining factor limiting the time of study. We got about 4 hours of data on CASE #2.

We shopped in an intensely crowded market, walked on a busy road, visited an informal fishing village and took measurements at our site just above the village.

Everyone we met was very interested in the sensor and the story it might tell.

May 15-16: We tried to take the sensors out to a relatively remote area (Cape Coast).  While battery life was our challenge when we tried to walk around with the sensor in the city, now the challenge in a remote location was network availability – there was none where we were.

May 17-18: We returned and brought two sensors (# 2 and #3) back to our site in Jamestown, Accra to get more data and see if the data from two sensors had matching data while in the same place.

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We, at FutureAir, are excited about the partnership and look forward to analyzing the data collected from the trip to further advance our product research and development.

To read more about CASE’s innovative research, see: http://www.case.rpi.edu/page/research.php

RMI Redefines Thermal Comfort

May 2016

In December 2015, the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) made news when they unveiled their new Innovation Center in Basalt, Colorado. As a sustainability and energy efficiency non-profit, RMI sought to inspire and drive the industry by constructing a deep green building that achieves net zero energy and has no central heating and cooling system.

The RMI Innovation Center redefines thermal comfort through passive and integrative design. They outline 5 steps they used to achieve thermal comfort through design and science:

  1. Target all six variables in the thermal comfort formula known as the predicted mean vote (PMV): temperature, humidity, activity, clothing, air velocity, mean radiant temperature (the average of all surface temperatures in the room).
  2. Focus first on reducing loads with passive design such as higher insulated windows
  3. Target personal comfort solutions since each individual will be affected by many variables
  4. Build an integrated project team with clear, consistent documentation
  5. Openly discuss and manage risks and contingency plans

“The Innovation Center is not about technology, but about design. This building achieves beyond net-zero energy because we have gotten better at choosing and combining technologies to maximize building performance.” –Amory Lovins (Chairman/Chief Scientist, RMI)

To read the RMI blog in more detail, see: http://blog.rmi.org/blog_2016_05_10_top_5_steps_to_redefining_thermal_comfort

Resources:

http://www.rmi.org/innovationcenter

http://www.aspentimes.com/news/20040641-113/rmis-future-is-now-with-innovation-center-in

Sensor Spotlight: FutureAir at Atelier Ten

May 2016

Earlier this month, FutureAir partnered with Atelier Ten, an international environmental design consultant and engineering firm, to install one of our pilot air quality sensing platforms into their New York office. Atelier Ten is highly committed to sustainable design in the built environment and as a result see the value in increasing indoor thermal comfort and air quality, making them an ideal pilot location.

FutureAir’s lab setup at Atelier Ten involves measuring temperature, humidity, particulate matter, and VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds). By analyzing the data behind trends we see in the environment, we can develop meaningful and actionable insight. In addition to placing our sensing platform at Atelier Ten to collect data, we are also connected to the ceiling fans and will eventually connect to their Nest device. This will provide the control system needed to regulate the environment based on readings from the sensor, creating a full feedback loop for optimal thermal comfort and indoor air quality.

Improving Indoor Air Health & Comfort

May 2016

From May 12-13, our co-founder and chief engineer Michael Wang will be joining the world’s leading innovators at the RE•WORK Connected Home Summit in Boston. The event will discuss creating the next generation of the smart connected home, by applying IoT and machine learning to create smarter, more efficient buildings.

The connected home growth rate is estimated to reach $490 billion in 2019. The Connected Home Summit will showcase the opportunities of emerging trends in the sector. Industry leading speakers, including CTOs, CEOs, founders, designers and engineers are experts in low-cost sensors, connected devices, automated systems, virtual assistants, security systems, energy meters, household appliances and wireless connectivity.

During his talk at 9:35 am on Friday, May 13 Michael Wang will cover improving indoor health and comfort, the intersection of design and technology, and FutureAir’s mission and hardware sensing platform.

If you are in the Boston area, this is a don’t miss event.

More details can be found here: https://re-work.co/events/connected-home-boston-2016

Healthy Building Materials and Design

April 2016

Air quality is one of the biggest threats to our health & well-being in the built environment. And even though these negative effects can be precipitated through building materials, there is often a disconnect between building design and public health.

As a recent Harvard study suggests, the types of building materials used and ventilation and filtration system configurations can have a major impact on health and productivity. The study analyzed the performance of office workers in both ‘green’ and ‘non-green’ building scenarios, measuring the impact of ventilation, chemicals, and carbon dioxide. The conclusions indicate cognitive performance scores in green environments were double that of conventional environments. This demonstrates that building managers, architects, and designers should consider these factors in order to improve indoor air quality, remove toxic chemicals, and lower carbon dioxide concentration.

Through their New Healthy Materials Program, Google is one company that has begun to incorporate this line of thinking into their buildings to foster a more energized and healthier work environment. The program database was created ‘to identify the healthiest products and materials for Google buildings around the world’. All products and materials go through a screening and scoring process that rewards transparency. Criteria are based on established standards such as the Health Product Declaration, GreenScreen, Cradle 2 Cradle and aligned with LEED version 4 rating system. Google also developed Portico, the Healthy Materials Tool, to help further product and material information transparency in order to make informed decisions. Using this tool, manufacturers can keep track of their inventory and level of transparency while architects and contractors can determine what meets Google’s criteria for buildings.

Ultimately, increasing awareness of healthy building and indoor air is becoming evident in initiatives such as the New Healthy Material Program, the growing conversation among architects and designers, implementation of standards (e.g. Delos’ WELL Building Standard), and development of innovative smart office systems.

Resources:

http://www.curbed.com/2016/3/23/11288738/office-air-quality-cognition-harvard-study

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/green-office-environments-linked-with-higher-cognitive-function-scores/

https://support.google.com/healthymaterials/answer/6076896?hl=en&ref_topic=6079430