Air pollution is a tremendous problem in many urban cities. With this in mind, two European architects have developed algae-filled plastic curtains designed to turn building facades into “living walls” that clean dirty air.
The curtains contain a mazelike network of cylinders filled with microscopic green algae. Like all plants, algae remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air while pumping out oxygen via the carbon-sequestering process known as photosynthesis. As a result, air flows into the bottom of the curtains and ascends through the tubes, feeding the microalgae along the way.
Claudia Pasquero, one of the creators of the algae curtains, explained:
Microalgae have exceptional properties that have been discovered by biologists that allow them to re-metabolize some of the waste that our city generates. What we’ve done is try to understand how we can integrate microalgae in the urban environment.
Pasquero, an architect with EcoLogicStudio, and her partner on the project, Marco Poletto, foresee a substantial market for eco-friendly drapes, particularly for use on distribution centers and other large structures valued more for their function than their appearance. The duo believes the curtains could sell for $350 per square meter, though they didn’t specify when a commercial version of the curtains would be available to the public.
The architects displayed an early model of the curtains in Ireland, covering the first and second floors of Dublin Castle with over a dozen of the drapes. Altogether, the green curtains used to cover the palace can suck several pounds of CO2 from the air per day, according to the duo. That’s roughly the amount of CO2 removed by twenty large trees every day.
While the design sounds effective, some critics are not impressed with the curtains. For example, Gaboury Benoit, an environmental chemistry professor at Yale, told NBC News MACH:
I appreciate the architects thinking outside the box, but this approach seems more of a gimmick than a real solution.
Even if the curtains effectively remove some carbon dioxide from the air, they don’t provide shade, as trees do. And unlike the drapes, which the architects said would need to be reconditioned every two to three years, trees are naturally self-replenishing. I’d say trees do it better unless a detailed study shows me otherwise.
However, Poletto said the drapes could be designed to provide some shade to building interiors, adding that they could be used in areas where extreme cold restricts tree development and in urban spaces where there is nowhere to plant them.
One true thing is the curtains would be much better if they were not made from plastic. Nonetheless, the need to discover new approaches to rid the atmosphere of excess CO2 is significant. A UN report on climate change warned that the world must take “unprecedented” action to save our warming planet.
