New Clean Water Tech Described As 'Disco Ball'
By Sara Jerome,
@sarmje
Can water treatment processes also function as an art display? Architect Andrés Jaque is testing that premise in a major water treatment project at the museum MoMA PS1 in New York this spring.
"MoMA PS1‘s courtyard will come to life...in June 2015 with the debut of Andrés Jaque‘s giant water-purifying pavilion, which took home the grand prize for this year’s 2015 Young Architects Program Competition," Inhabitat reported.
Dubbed COSMO, the project is "a bio-chemical tower engineered to raise awareness of global water poverty and serve as an easily replicated model for providing access to drinking water around the world," the report continued.
The idea is to construct a functional treatment system that also manages to provide aesthetic value. It's partially utilitarian and partially an art project.
"Sustainability doesn’t necessarily need to be something that’s boring or hidden to us," Jaque said, per Fast Company. "He likes to think of COSMO as a disco ball—'part of the party,' as he puts it," according to the report.
The structure will be filled with plants, steel irrigation pipes, wires, and wheels.
"A microorganism inside COSMO glows in the dark in response to the purified water, lighting up the courtyard. A smartphone app allows visitors to check in on the water quality within the installation at any time. COSMO represents a whole new way to think about urban water reuse, as a public spectacle to be admired, rather than a process hidden underground and in treatment plants. It also functions as a massive outdoor air-conditioner," Fast Company reported.
It may be pretty, but how much water can the system treat?
"COSMO is engineered to filter and purify 12000 liters of water, eliminating suspended particles and nitrates, balancing the PH, and increasing the level of dissolved oxygen. It takes four days for the 12000 liters of water to become purified, then the cycle continues with the same body of water, becoming more purified with every cycle," BMIAA reported.
Image credit: COSMOS © Andrés Jaque / Office for Political Innovation