Construction ● Spatial Design ● Interaction Design ● Climate Resilience
As the world runs warm and dry, water is the new oil.
COSMO is made of pipes, tanks, hoses, irrigation structures, and plants. It is a piece of plumbing designed to make three thousand gallons of reused water circulate through a series of ecosystems capable of filtering and purifying water. removing from it its suspended particles, balancing its PH, eliminating its nitrates, and increasing its level of dissolved oxygen. The cycle starts with used water poured into four connected transparent cylindrical tanks, containing diverse ecosystems where anaerobic and aerobic digestion, nitrification and denitrification are naturally promoted. The water circulates through a coil of transparent plastic pipes where it is exposed to ultraviolet light to ensure its biological stability. Then on to a series of cells where a controlled environment of growing algae reduces its levels of nitrogen and phosphorus. Through gravity, the water reaches a series of algal-turf-scrubbers, three levels of waterfalls designed to increase levels of dissolved oxygen. Through a second coil, the water is conducted through a series of acrylic capsules where a selection of diverse vegetal species expose the water to different filtering conditions. A complex ecosystem made of pipes that creates an environment of climatic comfort around it with an estimated reduction of 6 degrees by the combined effect of shade, evaporation, and air depression.
COSMO is made out of customized irrigating centered pivots with their light structural logic, their curved steel pipes, and their capacity to move in the land. COSMO is equipped to move and to go wherever the party is needed. COSMO works steadily. And the moment it succeeds purifying its contained water, a combination of luminescent microorganisms in need of pure water to fully develop, start to shine in the dark of PS1 summer nights, automatically indicating the achievement of a collective nonhuman community. The partying public is then lighted by COSMO's performance. COSMO is a machine to celebrate eco-systemical achievement. But that is only its most literal way to performance. COSMO expands online where the data produced by sensors immersed in its water convey to its follower the evolution of its turbidity: its PH, its electrical conductivity, its level of nitrates, or dissolved oxygen. COSMO is a prototype of many interventions to come. The intelligence tested in it will mobilize a diverse public around the world, all of them participating in discussions of water, reenacting COSMO's experiments, taking further its purifying capacity. Once the summer finishes, its plants will be adopted by neighbors that will expand COSMO's intelligence to their windows, their rooftops, and their gardens. All its components will be taken there where they can be reused. It is an open prototype. During its time at PS1, and in its online expanded life. It will instigate and fuel individuals and smalls groups to discuss and to experiment how to enjoy giving more and more lives to the most valuable resource, water.
The animated images below unfolds the construction process over time.
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The seven minute video below, designed by Bolleria Industrial for Andrés Jaque of the Office for Political Innovation, summarizes how the building system are socialized by digital interfaces.
'Le chêne,' pronounced [leuh-sheh-n' means oak tree in French, my native language.
