2020 has been a year of unprecedented challenges for the humanity. Covid-19 has changed the world irrevocably, and cities around the world are searching for new ways of providing heightened safety and hygiene measures while maintaining a welcoming, sustainable environment. The vulnerabilities of the current state of urban hygiene and health systems around the world demand urgent, efficient and sustainable solutions. This brought a new source of inspiration for architects and designers involved in the search for alternative solutions to help us avoid a global pandemic in the future and improve urban sanitation in general. With this in mind, architectural and interior designer Chloe Rokelle Sun developed Living Future® a sustainable art installation that introduces color, light, greenery, and provocative, space-enhancing architecture to any public space, while at the same time offering an inviting handwashing station that filters and recovers the water it uses.
Living Future® combines important principles of biophilic design, sustainability, and social purpose, providing a clean, green source of fresh water for public handwashing to promote hygiene and combat the transmission of airborne viruses, while beautifying and enhancing public spaces through sustainable technology.
Urban centers throughout the world are extremely densely populated, increasing public health risks and posing daunting challenges to public safety in the new reality of infectious airborne viruses. To meet this challenge, the pioneering project, Living Future®, is designed to be installed in urban spaces such as shopping malls, office buildings, city plazas, and other high-traffic areas. While enlivening public spaces with captivating aesthetics, Living Future® makes handwashing inviting, sustainable, and pleasant, offering a first and most important step toward increasing public hygiene in the post-pandemic world.
THE MAKING OF: Living Future®
Living Future utilizes technology from some of the most forward-thinking contemporary architectural projects and repurposes them for a new, smarter, and safer future. This biophilic installation is both a modular, interactive lighting sculpture and a living machine filtration system, uniting the conceptual and aesthetic capacities of sculpture with the ecological and technological.
Nanoleaf modular smart LED light panels on the installation’s facade can be customized in color and luminosity to enhance any environment, adding captivating colors through interactive lights that react to the touch.
Live plants sustained by Living Machine Technology are placed throughout the design structure, providing a calming sense of nature regardless of the feature’s location, while also contributing to the wastewater filtration system. The installation’s built-in ecosystem blends cutting-edge science and engineering with beneficial microorganisms and the plants’ natural properties to generate a clean, reusable, lasting water source.
The first Living Future installation is planned for 2021. Keep an eye out by following Chloe Rokelle Sun below!
