FutureAir

Tag: Environment

BLDGS = DATA

April 2019

The workplace, once a stereotypical stuffy cubicle inside of a larger brick cubicle, has garnered much attention over the past couple of years.

In fact, so many progressive workplace improvements have been made over the last decade that now some mythical bubbles are beginning to pop. For example, while the open concept workplace may actually lead to a reduction in productivity, and not everyone wants or needs a standing desk. However, without attempting alternative approaches to workspace design, there would never have been a way to understand what works and what does not. Well, maybe there is but we just don’t know about it…yet.

Founded in 2010, WeWork builds shared offices with a mission to create community spaces. A recent Bloomberg Businessweek article detailed the ways that WeWork has been collecting and analyzing information about how people move and operate within the workplace with the mission of using buildings more efficiently. WeWork recently implemented devices as a test bed in their own office headquarters, in San Francisco, to better understand how and when space is used.

Enabled by a recently acquired data software company, Euclid, WeWork located thermal sensors under conference room tables to detect how many people are in a room, at any given time. WeWork also maps cellphone data to understand where people spend their time both physically by location and digitally through phone usage. These various tools are not intended to target individual employees, rather they help WeWork understand how people and buildings respond to work environments on a large scale. With the relevant data, workspaces can adapt to fit employers needs for productivity and the environment’s needs for buildings to be energy efficient. Employees sport tee shirts that read, “Bldgs = Data.”

WeWork is right…buildings do equal data. We can not change the things we do not see. As a society that relies heavily on the scientific method, we still need hard evidence to pinpoint variables that must change for more productive, and frankly, practical solutions. The proper tools are not quite readily available to gather building data. WeWork will use their research to advise on ways to improve energy efficiency and the health, productivity, and well-being of a building’s occupants.

WeWork’s data begins to demonstrate where resources are wasted. This information is key to understanding how to preserve energy for our planet and, ultimately, for ourselves. If we study how we work and spend our time then perhaps we can get closer to a solution to the things that reduce our quality of life. Perhaps we can structure our lives and our buildings to meet our human needs.

Buildings equal data, and humans do too.

Every Move You Make, WeWork Will Be Watching You, Bloomberg Businessweek

Written for FutureAir By Mollie Wodenshek

Image Credit: Inkee Wang

The FutureAir Mission

March 2019

Musings on Language and Culture

I remember a time in college when I believed that language could change the world. I thought if we altered our vocabulary we could alter our perspectives. A sort of reverse brain wiring. Although the relationship between language and brain development has been hotly contested, especially amongst psychoanalysts, I still believed in the power of language to shape perspective and culture. By now, I have come to accept language as a tool rather than the end. So, how do we choose words to reflect the future culture we want to see. How do we build the world we want to live in through language?

In working with FutureAir, I have come to recognize the importance of the moment we are in. FutureAir is more than a startup company designing a product to offer a solution to a problem. Beyond FutureAir’s utilitarian value, we are creating awareness. We are opening a door. Perhaps we are opening Pandora’s box, but it is a risk we are willing to take.

The idea of FutureAir is to reevaluate the spaces we spend the most time in and explore the effect of those environments on our health. As a society, since the post-Vietnam war era, we have turned attention toward outdoor air pollution. We have created ways to mitigate the human effect on air pollution. We have enacted measures and plans to counteract the effects of carbon emissions in the air. However, all the while we have been caring for the health of our planet, we have neglected to observe environmental issues closest to home–those within the home. How do the microclimates affect our human health?

What is Clean Indoor Air?

FutureAir is focused on indoor air. In fact, FutureAir hopes to consider indoor air as a resource like outdoor air, water, fossil fuels, etc. In considering indoor air a resource it becomes a part of the common.

In the capitalist American society we live and work in, the common has often become privatized to make a quick buck off exploiting people’s needs while simultaneously excluding low socioeconomic communities from access to resources. FutureAir does not claim to solve this ingrained issue, but we do profess to be a socially-conscious company.

With FutureAir, we are introducing a new resource to the market. The question is: how can we market and brand FutureAir to acknowledge the failures of modern architecture and the dangers of indoor air, while also making the company, and the resource of clean indoor air, inclusive?

Ultimately, everyone deserves access to clean indoor air and FutureAir’s Smart Air Manager™
will allow consumers to monitor the quality of air within their homes. However, FutureAir also hopes to share knowledge, generate awareness, and create behavior change. Perhaps the latter will be met through the language we utilize to shape our mission.

The Dictatorship on Words

On the morning of Martin Luther King Day 2019, I sat down to my computer to address some language choice issues on FutureAir’s one sheet. Co-founder and CEO, Simone Rothman, her daughter, Tess Gruenberg, and I were struggling over how to properly define the mission of FutureAir. We set out to figure out how FutureAir relates to indoor air. Initially, we called clean indoor air a luxury resource, however, luxury necessitated exclusivity, which is counter to the foundation of FutureAir. So, we discussed the novel idea of clean indoor air as, simply, a resource.

I came to realize that clean indoor air was indeed a resource like any other (i.e. air, water, solar, etc.). A resource is defined as a stock or supply of assets that can be drawn on to function effectively. Research has demonstrated the value of clean indoor air as a means for greater health and productivity amongst a workforce. Therefore, clean indoor air is something we need to function effectively. However, the difference between clean indoor air and other common resources listed before is the descriptive word “clean”.

The fact is, clean indoor air is not currently a given. Additionally, clean indoor air is limited. Workplaces, institutions, homes and other buildings have neglected to consider indoor air quality in building infrastructure at least since the 80s. Only in the 2010s have we seen a reversal of this negligent thinking. In FutureAir’s endeavor to bring awareness to the polluted nature of indoor air and provide a means to clean it, we are creating a resource that does not currently exist. It is a resource that comes out of deterioration and reckless development. It is a resource that comes out of decay; perhaps it rises from the ashes.

So the question remains, how do we frame clean indoor air as a resource when it is born from decay and not inherently abundant? How do we frame clean indoor air as a resource when it is a result of the man-made built environment? This brought an even deeper question: how do we, as a society, recognize nature as ubiquitous and not mutually exclusive from the man-made environment?

Ontologically…

As we parsed words on Martin Luther King day, I began to think about Martin Luther King, the master orator, and a MLK scholar I had seen speak at Colorado College in 2017, Russell Rickford. Rickford recited a poetic analysis of the “true” Martin Luther King versus the “King” that is socially acceptable, force-fed to us to the point of regurgitation.

The former King spoke of nonviolence but his orations threatened the status quo of society. He spoke of things that divided people in order to uplift Black Americans who had been oppressed and pushed to the fringes of society. He adamantly spoke out against imperialism and the war in Vietnam. He valued protest.

The latter King is white-washed and passive. He believes in love as the driving force behind unity. He is nonviolent to the point of non-threatening. He is the King we are enticed to remember in order to keep the rest of us silent.

The latter King is palatable, easy to digest for the people in society who benefit from capitalism, imperialism, and oppression. The latter King makes it seem as if equality has been achieved, and we all stand equal in society. The latter King paints a picture of inclusivity without one actually existing.

In Conclusion

The connection between MLK day and the word choice debacle with FutureAir is not to say that FutureAir’s issues are comparable to the Civil Rights Movement. But the lesson to be learned from King is about who dictates history. The people who write history are most often the ones who benefit from it.

In developing the FutureAir brand and creating a new resource of clean indoor air, we are in effect writing history. We are not alone in this process either. Other companies are also serving to create clean indoor air. In this crucial environmental moment, we have a choice between accessibility and exclusivity.

So much of the sustainable movement has been commodified. This is not to say that commodification is unnecessary or bad. However, commodification can result in exclusivity that makes the common inaccessible. Think bottled water. The difference between water and clean indoor air is that although both are currently limited, clean indoor air has the potential to be abundant.

Air, as a natural resource, affects us in the manufactured domain in the form of indoor air. In its current state, indoor air is polluted. Thus, clean indoor air is, in theory, a new resource. As a resource, it is by nature, common. FutureAir and others are working to introduce the importance of clean indoor air into society’s environmental consciousness so everyone has the opportunity to benefit from it.

Tools and means to achieve clean indoor air may be a luxury, but it is important to remember that knowledge itself does not have to be commodified. With FutureAir, we hope to choose words that express the common nature of clean indoor air, and more importantly, how critical clean indoor air is to human health. FutureAir’s Smart Air Manager™ is a tool, but it is not the end. At FutureAir we are creating a means to achieve the next indispensable resource: clean indoor air.

Written by Mollie Wodenshek for FutureAir

References
Rickford, Russell, “It’s time to reclaim the true Martin Luther King,” Washington Post, 2018.

Air Pollution under Trump

December 2018

Back in October, President Trump tweeted a bastardized WHO (World Health Organization) map that purported the U.S. had the cleanest air in the world. Although the U.S. has cleaner air than more populated countries in Asian and African regions, it is far from unpolluted, and farther from innocent.

The original WHO map displayed the levels of PM2.5 around the world. PM stands for particulate matter, and PM2.5 denotes small, but inhalable, particles present in the air that can cause serious health issues. PM2.5 comes from coal power plant emissions, automobiles, wildfires, and other sources. The EPA set the National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for PM2.5 at 12μg/m3 in 2012. The current average for the Northeast region in the United States falls beneath 12. However, in the West and the Rockies, the PM2.5 rises above the standard.

The EPA says, “Despite great progress in air quality improvement, approximately 111 million people nationwide lived in counties with pollution levels above the primary NAAQS in 2017.” According to Apte Research group, the levels of PM2.5 in the air reduce life expectancy one whole year on average. Of course, that average considers the best and worst air quality regions. The Apte Research Group reports life expectancy can be reduced by 0.4 years in the cleanest countries and 1.8 years in the most polluted.

Throughout the Obama administration, the U.S. took steps to create regulations to reduce PM2.5, however, in the wake of Andrew Wheeler’s appointment as director of the EPA, regulations are being rolled back, or in some cases, retrospectively revised. In October, the EPA discontinued its air pollution review panel, which makes regulations revisions easier to achieve.

Despite the looming government shutdown, the EPA on December 28, proposed a revision to the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS). The proposed guideline revision would reduce public health as a factor in determining dangerous air pollutants. The Washington Post reported, “the change would prevent regulators from calculating positive health effects — known as “co-benefits” — that come from reducing pollutants other than those being targeted.”

Evidence suggests that Mercury restrictions prevent an average of 11,000 premature deaths and 4,700 heart attacks annually amongst workers. However, the EPA’s actions now suggest, “it was inappropriate to factor in such co-benefits.” The irony is the EPA’s mission is to protect human health and the environment. It seems Andrew Wheeler is struggling or doesn’t care enough to follow the compounding effects of air pollution. Perhaps all the PM2.5 in the air is making his thinking hazy.

The correlations are clear, greenhouse gases are the largest emitter of PM2.5. PM2.5 pollutes the air, is hazardous to breathe, and reduces life expectancy. Now is NOT the time to turn back on progress, but to continue building awareness and understand the effects of air pollution on human health in order to live long healthy lives.

Written by Mollie Wodenshek for FutureAir

References
Apte JS, Brauer M, Cohen AJ, Ezzati M, Pope CA III, “Ambient PM2.5 reduces global and regional life expectancy,” Environmental Science and Technology Letters, 2018.
Dennis, Brady and Eliperin, Juliet, “EPA to make it harder to tighten mercury rules in the future,” The Washington Post, 2018.
Guillén, Alex, “Trump touts U.S. air quality — under Obama,” Politico, 2018.
Sengupta, Somini, “Air Pollution Is Shortening Your Life. Here’s How Much,” The New York Times. 2018.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency, “Particulate Matter (PM2.5) Trends.”

Photo
Cheshire, Ohio. Captured by Maddie MgGarvey for The New York Times.

The Ecological Living Module

August 2018

For as long as there have been people, we have needed shelter: a place we can call home, where we can feel safe from the dangers and stresses of the world. Yet today, despite the millennia of progress that humanity has enjoyed, there are still nearly one billion people who live in informal settlements, often without access to energy and sanitation. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted and advocated for by the United Nations, seeks to provide both decent lives and adequate housing to those people in a manner that also accounts for the impact the housing sector has on our planet.

Achieving this goal in the face of growing urbanization requires smart, new housing solutions. This is where ELM–the Ecological Living Module–comes in. The Ecological Living Module is a collaboration between the UN Environment and UN Habitat, along with partners led by the Yale University School of Architecture and the Yale’s Center for Ecosystems in Architecture (CEA) with Gray Organschi Architects at the design helm. It is a 22-square-meter new eco-housing module intended to spark debate and new ideas on how to redesign the way we live; it was on display throughout July 2018 on the UN Plaza in New York City.

The Ecological Living Module is designed to demonstrate strategies for residential construction that provide high-quality, efficient, and flexible housing while supporting sustainable development in its region of deployment. For the New York City version of the Ecological Living Module, this included materials, systems, and micro-farming produce appropriate for the corresponding locality; as future iterations of the Ecological Living Module are built-out–such as one in Kenya, the home of the UN Environment Programmes (UNEP) and UN Habitat–those same materials, systems, and produce will be substituted accordingly.

Currently, the Ecological Living Module includes systems that encompass waste treatment, thermal comfort, micro-farming infrastructure, indoor air purification, general data & systems integration, water collection & purification, bio-based renewable materials, and solar energy. Some of these systems–such as water collection & purification–are almost completely out of sight, taking the form of rain water and on-site potable water collection, as well as tucked away filtration systems. Meanwhile, features such as the micro-farming wall are immediately visible on the Ecological Living Module as an exterior wall that houses a multitude of local produce. The net effect is a compact housing unit that by virtue of its efficient design illustrates a by-necessity degree of style and modernism.

Part of the Ecological Living Module’s design is also its prefabrication. Every unit is made of prefabricated components that require minimal construction, allowing for scalable shipping and deployment. This kind quick deployment is also a natural fit for relief housing during natural disasters and suggests a multitude of uses for the Ecological Living Module and its future iterations. The time required to prefabricate a single ELM is only 4 weeks, with a requirement of only 2 days to install the module once on site.

The best way to understand the implications of the Ecological Living Module is to visit it for yourself–while it is moving on from the UN Plaza in New York, the ELM will be popping elsewhere in the coming months, so keep an eye out for it. Approaching the ELM, with its micro-farm wall and slanted, solar panel fitted roof, the first thought might be how nouveaux and contemporary its design is. Then, as you step inside to see its compact, yet highly functional interior–complete with kitchen, lofted bedroom, composting toilet / shower room, and sitting room entryway–you’ll witness as form and function come seamlessly together, all in the name of a low cost, sustainable solution to the ever-present problem of providing people what they’ve needed since time immemorial: shelter.

What is LEED?

July 2018

LEED 101

According to the United States Green Building Committee (USGBC), buildings in the U.S. account for thirty-eight percent of CO₂ emissions and seventy-three percent of U.S energy consumption. In the age of climate activism, developers and contractors continuously seek ways to build greener buildings. Additionally, green building corporations offer investors the opportunity to receive tax breaks for green buildings.

The USGBC was founded in 1993 to encourage sustainable practices amongst the building industry. In 1998 Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, known as LEED, developed out of USGBC.

The USGBC website defines LEED as “a third-party green building certification program and the globally recognized standard for the design, construction and operation of high-performance green buildings and neighborhoods.” Therefore, LEED is an independent certification process that works with contractors and developers to create environmentally sustainable buildings.

LEED offers four levels of certification: Certified, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. Certification is achieved through a point system. To be certified a building must acquire forty to forty-nine points, for silver, fifty to fifty-nine, for gold, sixty to seventy-nine, and for platinum, a building must have eighty or more points.

The certification point system is based on prerequisites and credits. Prerequisites are the necessary standards to be considered for LEED certification and the credits are bonus components kind of like optional points.

The rating system varies among the four categories of building and construction. The four are LEED BD+C, or LEED building design and construction, LEED ID+C, or LEED interior design and construction, LEED O+M, or LEED building operations and maintenance, and LEED ND, or LEED for neighborhood design.

LEED certificates usually run between four and five figures–according to a CityLab article, that is a low price for a large building project. Additionally, LEED buildings receive tax deductions for their environmental benefits such as lower energy consumption and reduced carbon emissions.

LEED in the Building Ecosystem

The foundational motto of LEED is to reward investors for reducing their environmental degradation at every turn of the building process, from using paints with low VOCs (volatile organic compounds) or bamboo flooring to solar panel installation.

The USGBC states, “by promoting a whole-building approach to sustainability, LEED recognizes performance in location and planning, sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection, waste reduction, indoor environmental quality, innovative strategies and attention to priority regional issues.”

However, in recent years, LEED certification has come under fire. LEED certification is sought after for its tax credits, ability to attract tenants, and the ability to charge premium rental rates. However, certification is granted to the building during the construction process without much consideration for the building to maintain LEED standards. Therefore, investors benefit from acquiring the LEED certification without keeping LEED standards.

Furthermore, the point system is not well balanced. Some buildings achieve certification by focusing on green amenities rather than energy efficiency. A New York Times article from 2009 wrote, “some experts have contended that the seal should be withheld until a building proves itself energy efficient, which is the cornerstone of what makes a building green.”

The loopholes in the system existed because there was previously no requirement for buildings to report their energy findings. As of 2009 buildings must record and report energy use information. The certificate can be rescinded if the building does not meet standards.

The LEED certification process is always innovating and improving its commitment to sustainable buildings and energy efficiency. LEED has also lifted the veil on the building industry and its effects on climate change. LEED may be to thank for building sustainability awareness, but can it keep up?

Written by Mollie Wodenshek for Future Air.

Resources:
Anonymous, “Green Building 101: What is LEED”, USGBC.
Barth, Brian, “Is LEED Tough Enough for Climate Change Era?”, CITYLAB.
Navarro, Mireya, “Some Buildings Not Living Up to Green Label”, New York Times.
“This is LEED”, LEED, USGBC, http://leed.usgbc.org/leed.html.

Photo:
Mar-Flex

Our Deep Dependence On A/C

August 2017

Air conditioning has become a convenience that we take for granted across the United States. It is responsible for the comforts of modern living beyond just room temperature. And it is connected to almost every industry in ways that aren’t always visible. But it wasn’t always that way. A recent New York Times article titled “How Air Conditioning Conquered America (Even the Pacific Northwest),” by Emily Badger and Alan Blinder, tracks our dependence on air conditioning since the 1950’s—and it goes much deeper than you might expect.

Air conditioning has made economic growth practical in the hottest regions of the United States. “It made possible industrial work like printing, food processing and electrical manufacturing that would be hard to manage in sweltering heat. And it created the possibility for white-collar jobs in mechanically cooled office buildings.” Imagine production and progress being feasible in the humid south without central air.

Cooling technologies have everything to do with infrastructure and city planning. Sprawl is viable, and traffic is tolerable, because of air conditioning in cars. It made places like Phoenix, which is considered a relatively new city, possible. Types of building designs are also informed by air conditioning in regions like the Southwest, where wood housing is now used instead of just concrete construction.

Of course, these kinds of design decisions are problematic and unsustainable. “‘With the advent of air-conditioning, we lost a lot of the common sense,’ said Kirk Teske, the chief operating officer at HKS Architects, with headquarters in Dallas. He worries that regions like the Northeast may lose it, too, setting up future challenges for office workers and residents when blackouts or other natural disasters come.”

And individual air conditioning use is on the rise as global temperatures increase (which in turn contributes to global warming in that disastrous loop). Even regions that historically never relied on air conditioning are now closer to the consumption of hotter regions like the South. In the Midwest, central air is built into 94% of new single-family homes. And across the US, window units are used in older buildings. In the Pacific Northwest, where there have been record-breaking heat waves this summer, more and more households are purchasing these units. “In 1990, just a third of households there used central air or window units. Now twice as many do.”

Air conditioning is connected to all of our modern conveniences, the infrastructure of our cities, and the economic growth of our country, including our digital lives (cooling is necessary for server farms and data centers). Our reliance on air conditioning isn’t going to shrink, but we can think more conscientiously about our use and design, and create a new kind of common sense.

Want Energy Solutions: Fix Air Con

July 2017

The irony that air conditioning contributes to global warming is hard to miss: as temperatures increase, the more we use air conditioning—and the more we use air conditioning, the more we heat the planet. And yet this piece of the puzzle is largely missing from the climate change dialogue. According to this New York Times article by Lisa Friedman, one reason is that coolant chemicals (refrigerants) don’t make for a very sexy dinner party conversation.

In 1987, the Montreal Protocol, an international treaty designed to protect the ozone layer by phasing out the production of numerous substances, namely CFCs, that are responsible for ozone depletion, was signed. Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) became the alternative. While HFCs are less directly harmful to the ozone layer, they are still greenhouse gases and, according to the EPA, are designated as having “high global warming potential (GWP).”

An amendment to the Montreal Protocol was reached in Kigali last year, geared to eliminate the use of HFCs. Another NYT article, reporting on the deal, states that HFCs “function as a sort of supercharged greenhouse gas, with 1,000 times the heat-trapping potency of carbon dioxide.” Phasing out HFC’s could mean “avoiding an estimated half degree Celsius of warming by 2100.” The richest countries, including the US, are supposed to freeze HFC consumption by 2018. But the United States’ relationship to this amendment is unclear at this point.

Reimagining cooling is essential to approaching the problem of climate change and one of the major factors that could lead to emission reduction. If we change how we cool ourselves, we could significantly lower our potential warming from the predicted 4 to 5 degree increase.

The Montreal Protocol caused such a shift in the production and science around cooling, motivated by our clear impact on the environment, that it gives this writer hope another agreement like it can be reached. The new amendment is one step of many, but it is a big step.

Factories that manufacture air conditioners are also a large contributor to carbon emissions. Friedman’s article goes on to discuss the efficiency of air conditioning production: demand for air conditioning is increasing, which means the energy needed for production will increase as well. “1.6 billion new air-conditioners by 2050 means thousands of new power plants will have to come on line to support them.”

The demand for air conditioning is growing rapidly. Without innovation, this will only contribute further to global warming, and hence to an even greater demand for cooling technologies—an endless loop. That’s why these issues of cooling chemicals and efficiency are starting to be approached in creative, interdisciplinary, and comprehensive ways, across the interconnected fields of science and design. Innovation and policy changes go hand-in-hand when it comes to air products, which, to me, is a pretty sexy dinner party topic.

How air conditioning shaped architecture

June 2017

Air conditioning and modern architecture are more connected than what you think and the article “How air conditioning shaped modern architecture – and changed our climate” proves it. The writer, Patrick Sisson, provides us with an entertaining and didactic tour around architecture, technology and air. What we found very exciting about this piece is that while Sisson demonstrates how numerous building typologies adapted to the sudden freedom provided by air conditioning, he also emphasizes that artificial cooling has fueled today’s energy and environmental crisis.

In other words: yes, air conditioning allowed architects to design towers without atriums or light wells; yes, air conditioning “meant workers didn’t need to sit near a window and hence “offices could suddenly have larger floorplates, encouraging collaboration and denser construction”; yes, air conditioning made sealed buildings possible –hence, receiving no city dirt and dust through open windows. But of course, all these “advantages” had a flipside: “The adoption of the “windowless wall” created the fluorescent-lit, dull and dim office spaces many workers abhor” and major health implications were derived from the unhealthy air quality inside closed-off buildings. But what’s even worst: “the most damaging part of this shift has been the cost, in energy and carbon emissions, of our cool new world. By 2014, 87 percent of U.S. homes had some form of air conditioning”. The cooling of buildings and vehicles in the United States “contributes to half a billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions every year. We consume more energy for residential air conditioning than all other countries combined, although, with other countries such as China and India in pursuit of glass-walled visions of modernity, that is going to change, and not in a good way. Due in large part to indoor climate control, buildings utilize half of total U.S. energy consumption”.

All in all, we certainly agree with Sisson when he states: “Air conditioning promised a cooler, more modern environment indoors. But unless architects and designers continue to develop more green, efficient ways to keep our buildings cool, it will be increasingly difficult to escape the warming environment outside”.

For the complete article click here.

Photo Credit: “Curbed”

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

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.