With summers becoming more and more suffocating due to climate change, many cities become unlivable ovens for months. Cities need profound transformations in the face of high temperatures, with more trees and less asphalt, but these can take decades. What to do while? The architects Belinda Tato and José Luis Vallejo have created in Harvard University an innovative temporary solution to reduce heat in areas without vegetation: a cheap climate shelter prototype —it is made with simple materials, such as scaffolding, solar panels and flower pots— and can be assembled very quickly to generate freshness on any surface, from a hard square to a disused parking lot.
Tato (Madrid, 52 years old) and Vallejo (Bilbao, 53) created 25 years ago Urban Ecosystema study focused on innovating public space and improving the climatic comfort of cities. His is, for example, the project of Vallecas Eco-boulevard (Madrid), which converted an area on the outskirts of the capital into a climate-conditioned public space in 2007, and they have also worked in America, Africa and Asia. Both are now dedicated to teaching in the United States—Tato is a professor of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University, while Vallejo teaches Urban Planning at Columbia University—while maintaining the activity of their studio, which has offices in Madrid and Boston.
Its new prototype combines its two facets, research and planning. “This project is along the same lines as the Eco-boulevard, but reflecting on what to do if there is no time or money to build something permanent, and you need something immediate, temporary, that can be assembled and dismantled without generating waste,” explains the architect by video call from Cambridge. “It is a solution that can be assembled in a few days and helps to greatly improve climatic comfort in an asphalt or concrete area,” he continues.
The invention is called Polinature —a play on words in English between pollinators and nature— because another of its main objectives is to attract pollinators, increasingly endangered in urban environments. “Bees are disappearing from cities due to the effect heat island [por el que las ciudades retienen mucho más calor que las zonas colindantes] and because of the pesticides that are used, but they are essential for the food chain, without them we would die,” says the expert.
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From the outside, the structure looks like some kind of giant alien flower; Inside, green permeates everything. The temporary construction has a hexagonal shape, although it could be easily configured in many other ways, since it is made with scaffolding. “All the items come from a construction catalog and are easy to get anywhere,” he says. Two types of bubbles are located three and a half meters high, the white ones, which provide shade, and the orange ones, which can inflate to generate wind. Above that level are the pots, with some 1,400 plants native to the State of Massachusetts ideal for attracting insects.
Vallejo explains – also from Cambridge – the rest of the operation. “The prototype has sensors distributed throughout the structure that are measuring five variables: temperature, humidity, solar radiation, wind speed and air quality. Then, an algorithm combines them and, from a certain level, the fans turn on and the orange bubbles inflate, generating an air current that generates climatic comfort.”
The structure is self-sufficient, as it has solar panels to power the sensors, bubbles and fans, as well as night lighting. The financing to create it comes from Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability (Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability) at Harvard University and, as planned, will be dismantled in a few weeks. “Now we will analyze the data and generate scientific knowledge to see the viability of the prototype, learn from it and improve it the next times,” says Vallejo. The first data show that placing yourself inside this climatic refuge can reduce the temperature by up to five degrees compared to the outside.
Generate meeting points
“This can serve to generate a meeting point and rehabilitate an abandoned space, such as a parking lot that wants to be reincorporated into the public space system, an abandoned lot or a hard plaza,” says the urban planner. Many Spanish cities have this type of squares without vegetation or trees, such as the Puerta del Sol in Madrid – just two years after remodeling it, the Madrid City Council is considering adding awnings -, the Joan Peiró square in Barcelona (next to the station of Sants) or that of Viriato in Valencia. Tato says: “In Spain there are many hard spaces where trees were not placed because there are parking lots underneath. These places are usually unbearable in summer, when the heat hits. Our idea is to make these types of spaces without shade more habitable.”
If in compact cities, like those in Europe, we think of hard squares, in the United States, with dispersed cities dominated by cars, gigantic parking lots and neighborhoods without vegetation predominate. Vallejo explains: “In the United States, the most disadvantaged neighborhoods are those with the fewest trees, the most huge parking lots, the most asphalt, and the most impervious surfaces, making them much more unlivable in the summer. In all these spaces there is more of a heat island effect. Our solution could play a role there.”
The creators point out that they are already in talks with several companies to find out how much it would cost to set up a similar structure in Spain. “The idea would be to make it as cheap as possible and offer it as an affordable product, which can be assembled and dismantled in summer in certain neighborhoods, or left on a semi-permanent basis, although it will depend on the companies that exist and the type of vegetation available,” Tato points out. And he concludes: “Of course cities have to become greener and more permeable, but these changes usually take years. “We propose a prototype that can be installed in a few days in many spaces.”
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