An odd-looking tower in India's Sunder Nursery is providing a breath of fresh air — actually, a lot of it.
That's because the New Delhi park is home to an ingenious outdoor purifier capable of cleaning enough air each day to fill 273 hot-air balloons, according to Inhabitat. It's part of Studio Symbiosis' effort to provide easier breathing for the city by cleaning up pollution from vehicles and industry.
The Verto 360 is a multidirectional air cleaner from the tech company, based in Germany and India. The tower, as tall as a two-story building, looks sort of like a piece of postmodern art, albeit a very large one. The designers are more interested in cleaning the air in urban areas than they are in aesthetics. Still, they bill it as "the most amazing and elegant public purifier."
The device has "smart fans" that suck in air. Fine filters remove small particles and dust, according to a description from Inhabitat. It takes the concept of indoor air filtration and supersizes it.
Their purification tower has five filtration cubes inside a triangulated shell. The smart fans use less energy when the air quality is better or when there's enough wind to push air through the filters. This makes the system energy-efficient, the makers claim, though the tower still uses energy. It is made from glass-fiber-reinforced concrete, according to Inhabitat.
In short, the project uses aerodynamics "that lets in polluted air and throws out clean air," the designers said in a summary on their website that also shared some shocking air-quality statistics from the World Health Organization.
The WHO reported in a fact sheet that 99% of the global population was living in areas with air quality below agency standards in 2019. Heart disease, cancer, and asthma are on the list of problems from poor outdoor air health, contributing to 4.2 million premature deaths.
Officials at the WHO call air pollution "one of the greatest environmental risk[s] to health."
The Verto 360 makers agree and have designed the sleek outdoor air scrubber as an answer.
Studio Symbiosis may manufacture the towers as a mass product. If 100 towers were installed in New Delhi, it would be "immensely beneficial" to air quality, according to Inhabitat.
The unique towers will certainly be attention-getters.
"That's a great way to tackle air pollution and a fantastic example of sustainable architecture in action!" a Twitter user commented in a post about the tech.
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