MISCIBLE HABITATS – URBAN AIR FILTER

MISCIBLE HABITATS is a project that combats air pollutant levels in central Beijing. This is achieved through the tectonic integration of new technologies into a formal building technique, and the reallignment of spatial and programmatic relationships in Beijing at an urban scale. The project develops a masterplan into an urban air filtering device. Within the new urban framework, a live/work ‘micro-village’ becomes the ultimate focus of the design research.

Beijing’s air pollution levels are unacceptable. While the focus in past decades from the Chinese government has been on growth and development, a realignment of policy is changing the government’s views in favour of sustainable development, triggering the investment of millions of Yuan in green technologies. The air quality in Beijing regularly pushes far above World Health Organisation (WHO) acceptable levels set for the EU. This both affects Beijing resident’s quality of life, and its standing in global politics. For the duration of the Olympic Games 2008, Beijing shut down upwind factories and imposed strict traffic controls to curb emissions in the face of international pressure.

A major contributor to Beijing’s air pollutants, namely Carbon Monoxide (CO) and Nitrous Oxides (Nox), is generated by traffic. The urban planning policy in Beijing has encouraged the mega-scale segregation of city functions, agglomerating programmatic distributions into zones, such as the Central Business District (CBD). City typologies have been reconceptualised as IMMISCIBLE. Long commuting distances, and an over-reliance on the automobile due to insufficient public transportation has caused gridlock. Slow moving traffic with regular stopping and starting significantly increases road emissions, exacerbating Beijing’s atmospheric condition.

MISCIBLE HABITATS proposes smaller (in footprint), polycentric ‘micro-villages’ with miscible (able to mix in all proportions) typologies. This is to encourage a more comprehensible sense of locality in the city, and to reduce the need for trans-urban journeys on a regular basis. Reductions in traffic loading will alleviate emissions and encourage local community ambiance.

Buildings within the ‘micro-villages’ will actively clean the air. Titanium Dioxide (TiO2) technology is applied to a porous concrete exoskeleton building system to break down air pollutants in a photocatalytic reaction. The project endeavours to optimise the effectiveness of the system by harmonizing porosity and surface area distributions with sunlight exposure and wind velocity models. This model is developed concomitantly with the façade system’s architecturally performative duties: scalar articulation, solar shading and structural behaviour.