EPT
Elegant Embellishments is a German design studio of two that caught my attention today. They havent produced a lot but I really like their ideas.
Prosolve370e
is a decorative, three-dimensional architectural tile that can be installed quickly to reduce air pollution in urban environments. The tiles provide councils, developers, and designers with the ability to rapidly improve urban environments in terms of air quality and visual appeal.
The preferred territories for such modifications are the standardized, repetitive surfaces of modernism, housing estates, traffic spaces, etc, which often fail to inspire a sense of ownership in citizens and deny individual expression in a homogenous, standardized world.
proSolve responds directly to a need to find appropriate architectural expression of a whole class of new high-performance "smart" materials. They incorporate sophisticated processes that occur on a molecular, invisible level and that are radical enough to transform our conceptions of buildings.
Targetting pollution created by vehicular combustion, prosolve tiles engage the inevitable context of cities and urban areas, converting previously inert surfaces to active surfaces. The tiles, which are modular in structure and coated in superfine titanium dioxide, utilize an elegant photo-catalytic process to reduce air pollution. Inspired by the fractal nature of sponges and corals, their increased surfaces area enhances the performance of the TiO2 technology in its omnidirectional reception of light. Emissions from combustion engines are identified as the largest source to air pollution in cities, their effect compounded by urban form. Urban motorways, tunnels, car parks, street canyons and underpasses trap pollution in high concentrations. When positioned near pollutant sources, previoulsy polluted spaces are improved in terms of air quality and visual appeal and re-appropriated for safe pedestrian use.
![[image loading]](http://www.elegantembellishments.net/images%203/citycollage_600.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.elegantembellishments.net/patch.JPG)
Pusan tower (!)
a competition entry for the new Busan Tower. Our proposal was an open-cage structure that disappears before the panoramic views of Busan. The tower's skin responds directly to its micro-climate through positioned temperature and light sensors. The sensors are each attached to weather balloons, reacting to localised drops in temperature, causing the balloons to inflate and, in turn, insulate.
On a sunny day, the building skin is skeletal, the tower's innards are exposed: thin tubes of vertical lifts and sound channels, connecting the upper platforms with the ground level.
On a cloudy day, the balloons inflate, composing a pillowy skin, protecting the interior from heavy winds.
On typical days in between, the sensors respond to the micro-climate in various points around the tower, opening patches with clear views, and insulating patches for protection.
The project attempts to relate the vertical change in temperature through the architecture, assuming that the building cannot respond uniformly to the differences in environment occuring from ground to sky.
The particular design of the weather-balloon facade becomes a new building prototype, suggesting the situational nature of insulation systems.
![[image loading]](http://www.elegantembellishments.net/climate-towers.jpg)
More on their site: http://www.elegantembellishments.net
