PHOTO.SYNTHETICA

ecoLogicStudio is an architectural and urban design practice specialized in environmental design, urban self-sufficiency and building integrated nature. In the so-called Anthropocene age, the use of cutting-edge technologies based on digital and biological intelligence, could be at the core of urban design and stimulate our collective sensibility to recognize patterns of reasoning across disciplines, materialities and technological regimes.

Photo.Synthetica, conceived by London-based ecoLogicStudio in a partnered consortium with Urban Morphogenesis Lab – UCL and Synthetic Landscapes Lab – University of Innsbruck, has been presented in Dublin during the week of Climate Innovation Summit 2018. An “urban curtain”, capturing CO2 from the atmosphere and storing it in real-time: approximately one kilogram of CO2 per day, equivalent to that of 20 large trees.

 

 

Designed to be integrated into both existing and new buildings, it is composed of 16,2 x 7 metres modules, each one functioning as a photo-bioreactor, a digitally designed and custom made bioplastic container, using daylight to feed the living micro-algal cultures and releasing luminescent shades at night. Unfiltered urban air is introduced at the bottom of the façade and air bubbles naturally rise through the watery medium within the bioplastic photobioreactors. CO2 molecules and air pollutants are captured and stored by the algae, and grow into reusable biomass. photosynthesized oxygen is then released from the top of each module.

Their serpentine design optimizes the carbon sequestration process, and contributes to ecoLogicStudio aim to symbolically embody a parallelism between the monetary carbon trading market and the transactions carried out by the molecules, as ecoLogicStudio’s founders say: “The message is one of spatial convergence and connectivity between the financial marketplace of cyberspace and the relative organic molecular transactions in the biosphere”.

 

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