FutureAir

Category: air

Lovegrove and the Future of Air

April 2017

Design “Intraspective” at the Pompidou Center in Paris from April 12 – July 3, 2017, is a must see, while work continues on Lovegrove’s next venture: Re-imagining indoor air.

FutureAir, established in New York in 2014 by Simone Rothman and Ross Lovegrove, along with a team of scientists from Harvard, MIT and Columbia, sets out to provide increased awareness, highly innovative, smart-control applications and actionable products to monitor and deliver comfort and purity as well as energy efficiency for indoor air.

As the go-to platform for 21st century air-conditioning, FutureAir brings new awareness to the critical issue of indoor air pollution and its effect on health, comfort, productivity and general wellbeing. Sophisticated and affordable sensor technology developed by FutureAir, identifies harmful gas emissions and dust particulates, while monitoring room temperature and humidity to provide optimal thermal or “real-feel” indoor air comfort for home, school and office as well as in hotels and hospitals. Additionally FutureAir products, enabled with IoT device-to-device communication, regulate excessive energy output and “cooling waste” to reduce overconsumption and greenhouse gases emissions into our atmosphere.

The sleek Ross Lovegrove biomimetic designs for FutureAir products create a new standard for an industry sorely lacking in aesthetics. His late-career emphasis on Convergent Design, which combines emerging technology with new materials, is particularly evident in Lovegrove’s new designs for FutureAir. His organic, earth-centric works are inspired by the logic and beauty of nature mixed with social and environmental consciousness. “This idea of Convergence”, Lovegrove explains, “is an inevitability in this day and age, when we are looking for a new model of industrialization”. “Design will become more bespoke as we make only what we need and design’s beauty and logic creep in as ecology and as evolutionary. More and more designers will be asked to do something useful, to do something relevant.”

The future of quality air and the optimal indoor environment has found its designer. Ross Lovegrove…now partnering with science to evolve the way we breathe and live.

Photo credit: Andrew Bordwin

Air Pollution Brings Down The Stock Market

April 2017

“Every time air quality decreased by one standard deviation, we saw a 12% reduction in stock returns.”

Comparing daily data from the S&P 500 index with daily air-quality data from an EPA sensor close to Wall Street, Professor Anthony Heyes and his colleagues from the University of Ottawa found a connection between higher pollution and lower stock performance concluding that air pollution brings down the stock market.

Apparently being exposed to bad air can make you feel depressed which in turn can reduce your cognitive capability. Bad moods and lower cognitive capabilities tend to reduce the appetite for risk, associated with lower returns.

For the complete article, click here

Interview by Scott Berinato

Cool Air at Pérez Museum

March 2017

The Pérez Art Museum in Miami, Florida, PAMM, has as incredible a building as it does a mission. Founded in 1984 and originally called the Center for Fine Arts, PAMM began as a partnership with the Metropolitan Dade County Government showing only temporary exhibitions. Later evolving into a private museum with a permanent collection dedicated to international art of the 20th and 21st centuries, PAMM’s mission continues to be to reflect Miami’s “diverse community and pivotal geographic location at the crossroads of the Americas.” Its sustainable waterfront facility is designed by Herzog & de Meuron to do just this.

Inspired in large part by Florida’s mangrove trees, Herzog & de Meuron’s design sits over the waterfront in a similar fashion to the trees themselves. PAMM’s many narrow columns and horizontal canopy veranda structure facilitate community oriented visitor experience while continuing to be innovative and sustainable. In a place as warm and rainy as Miami, sustainable air cooling practices were important for the cite specificity of PAMM’s design and continue to be one of the buildings biggest environmentally integrative strengths. In addition, PAMM’s builders were the first in America to use the cobiax system, a technological process that creates a similarly coffered foundation to the Parthenon in Rome, reducing the amount of concrete used for the facility.

Similarly economical, the trellis patterns of PAMM’s ceiling/ canopy save both material and energy. On the north side of the building where there is relatively little sun hitting the structure, the trellis pattern is the least dense, while on the south side, the trellis pattern creates as much shade as possible to keep visitors naturally comfortable. Simultaneously, air conditioning units reside in PAMM’s gallery floors, sending cool air immediately to visitors, and then exhausting through slots in the ceiling as the air gets warmer, avoiding wasting energy by cooling an entire gallery from top to bottom. PAMM’s hanging gardens, which are watered internally, naturally cool air that passes through them. Instead of letting frequent rainwater runoff create drainage patterns that could hurt the building’s surroundings, the foliage system at the center of PAMM’s structure allows water to pass straight through the building and then percolate back into the ground.

These aspects and much more make PAMM such a thoughtfully designed facility that we absolutely love to visit.

The Case For Optimism

February 2017

Six minutes into Al Gore’s 2016 Ted Talk, “The Case For Optimism on Climate Change,” and I do not feel very optimistic. The brilliant Gore has concisely, clearly, and grippingly laid out the status of global warming today, and it is grim. But, while I wait for the talk to shift from terrifying diagnoses to exciting statistics about strides made in energy efficiency, which it ultimately does, I begin to notice what it is about Gore’s tone that instills a sense of comfort in me regardless. What is comforting about Gore’s attitude is his futurism. He does not lament the past for a single moment, and he understands that global warming is the reality we live in, a reality that affects every part of our lives. He embraces this reality, and he has solutions. At a political moment when partisan disagreement is a sore subject for everyone Gore focuses his energy on practical ways for all of us to invest in a sustainable future. As his talk turns to the strides made by the Paris Agreement, it becomes clear that the biggest inspiration he gets is from the people who have fought and will continue to fight for what they believe in.

24 Hours of Reality

February 2017

Just weeks after the 2016 Presidential Election, this year’s 6th annual 24 Hours of Reality live streamed show came at a time of global transition with regards to the climate movement. Spending each hour of December 5-6th focusing on each of the top 24 carbon-emitting countries of the year, Al Gore devoted a full 24 hour day to solutions. With the Paris Agreement recently entering into force across the world, 24 Hours of Reality was a way for Gore to collectively and publicly make concrete what to so many of us can feel like nothing more than impending doom. While the prospect of world-wide accountability can be daunting, Gore brought together leaders from across the world to discuss the details of each of the 24 countries. Always using scientific rigor with political specificity, Gore’s devotion to global praxis reminds us what activism looks like in the 21st century.

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.

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.