Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde created the Smog Free Tower to create clean air in polluted cities. The tower uses patented ion technology to produce smog-free bubbles of public space, allowing people to breathe and experience clean air for free. Roosegaarde wants to advocate clean air as a basic human right and the design of the tower is meant to emulate a temple or shrine to fresh air. This project illustrates how technology can and should be used to help create spaces and experiences that are good for people's health.
For the tower to work, dirty air is sucked in through the top and cleaned on a nano level, and then clean air is emitted from the bottom. Small areas of air around the 75 per cent more clean than the rest of the city.
To enable the original Smog Free Tower, Roosegaarde launched a Kickstarter campaign, offering supporters tangible souvenirs such as Smog Free Rings, Smog Free Cubes and Smog Free Cufflinks of compressed smog particles. Extra money that was raised in the campaign went towards ensuring the tower was able to travel.
Roosegaarde presented at Design Indaba Conference 2013. Watch his full talk on creating techno poetry: “I’m a hippie with a business plan”.
