Spotted: Home delivery grocery shopping in European countries is expected to double in value by 2030. And, in the United States, researchers expect sales to be double 2021 levels by 2025. All those shipments require packaging, and many of them require temperature-controlled packaging for cold foodstuffs and other products.
Wanting to eliminate the polluting Styrofoam that would likely go along with many of those food shipments, US-based TemperPack has created a compostable packaging material suitable for shipping pharmaceuticals, groceries, meal kits, flowers, and more. Not satisfied with simply providing a Styrofoam alternative, the company seeks to improve efficiency and reduce waste along the entirety of the cold shipping supply chain with its insulation production station.
Called WaveKraft, the platform provides suppliers and distributors with on-demand packaging customised to the current temperature demands – of both the goods being shipped and the external weather conditions. Businesses buy the paper required to make the insulated packaging, and then fill the required sizes and shapes of paper forms with as much or as little air needed to maintain the required temperature.
ClimaCell thermal liners help maintain correct temperatures within the packaging. Made from paper and cornstarch, the liners are also recyclable, and, as a direct replacement for Styrofoam, they meet certified performance requirements.
Green Cell Foam is TemperPack’s third product, a compostable material that quickly breaks down in water and flushes down the kitchen sink. Made from corn, it provides both cushioning and temperature regulation, and for disposal, it can be fed to plants as a healthy supplement.
Biobased packaging is an exciting area of growth, with innovations in Springwise’s archive including a recyclable waterproof coating and single-use bags that dissolve in water.
Researchers from the University of Chicago have invented a cladding material that changes colour to help with heating or cooling and could be retrofitted to improve buildings’ energy efficiency.
The composite material consists of several different layers including copper foil, plastic and graphene, and based on the outside temperature can change its infrared colour – the colour it appears under thermal imaging.
At the same time, it also changes the amount of infrared heat it absorbs or emits from the building. On hot days, the material appears yellow under thermal imaging, indicating that it is emitting more heat, while on cold days it appears purple because it is retaining that heat.
Top: the material appears yellow under thermal imaging when in heating mode and purple when cooling. Above: a layer of copper is deposited on a film to trigger heating mode
When used on a facade – for example in the form of shingles – the material could potentially reduce the need for heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) and lower a building’s overall energy consumption.
“We’ve essentially figured out a low-energy way to treat a building like a person; you add a layer when you’re cold and take off a layer when you’re hot,” said materials engineer Po-Chun Hsu from the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, who led the research.
“This kind of smart material lets us maintain the temperature in a building without huge amounts of energy.”
Cladding responds to temperature like a chameleon
The University of Chicago describes the material as “chameleon-like” because it can change its colour in response to the outside temperature.
At a chosen trigger temperature, the material uses a tiny amount of electricity to either deposit copper onto a thin film or strip it away.
This chemical reaction effectively transforms the material’s central layer – a water-based electrolyte solution – into solid copper. The low-emitting copper helps to retain heat and warm the interior of a building, while the high-emitting aqueous layer keeps a building cool.
The layer of water-based electrolytes also helps to make the material non-flammable, and the researchers describe the switching process from metal to liquid and back again as “stable, non-volatile, efficient and mechanically flexible”.
“Once you switch between states, you don’t need to apply any more energy to stay in either state,” said Hsu. “So for buildings where you don’t need to switch between these states very frequently, it’s really using a very negligible amount of electricity.”
Material could reduce energy consumption by eight per cent
As part of their study, published in the journal Nature Sustainability, the researchers also created models to test the energy savings that could be achieved by applying their material to buildings in 15 US cities, representing 15 climate zones.
In areas that experienced a high variation in weather, they found the material could save 8.4 per cent of a building’s annual HVAC energy consumption on average. At the same time, the material relied on just 0.2 per cent of the building’s total electricity for its operation.
To slash these emissions, the material could be used to retrofit poorly insulated or historic buildings and improve their energy efficiency, as the researchers suggest it would be more convenient to install than insulation.
However, several of its components – including the monolayer graphene and gold microgrid used as transparent conductive layers – are currently still expensive and complicated to manufacture.
The researchers have so far created only six-centimetre-wide patches of the material but imagine assembling them like shingles to form larger sheets.
With the watery layer active, the material is a dark white colour, which turns a coppery brown when the copper layer is active.
But the material could also be tweaked to show different colours by adding a layer of pigments behind the transparent watery layer.
Another approach to keeping buildings cool is to paint them white. For this purpose, researchers at Purdue University recently developed the “whitest paint on record”, which reflects 98 per cent of sunlight.
British startup Water-Filled Glass has developed panes of glass filled with water that use sunlight to power a “crazy” energy-saving heating and cooling system.
Founded in 2020 by Loughborough University architecture lecturer Matyas Gutai and his colleagues Daniel Schinagl and Abolfazl Ganji Kheybari, Water-Filled Glass (WFG) aims to use patented technology to make heavily glazed buildings significantly more sustainable.
Its windows contain a thin layer of water between glass panes, which absorbs heat from sunlight or other radiation, such as heat leaving a room.
The warmed water is then pumped through sealed pipes at low pressure to colder areas of the building, through an underfloor system or into thermal storage.
Water-Filled Glass estimates its system can reduce energy bills by around 25 per cent
By absorbing thermal energy in this way the water-filled glass also limits how much solar heat gain enters the building through windows, reducing the need for air-conditioning in hot climates.
“We know that putting water in the window sounds like an outright mad idea,” Gutai told Dezeen.
“But we believe this is important because when you think about the energy of buildings and cutting carbon emissions, there’s still great potential and opportunity to think about glazing. Glass is responsible for a great part of heating and cooling energy consumption, and it’s a ubiquitous material, it’s on almost every building.”
Water House 2.0 in Taiwan is an experimental project testing the heating and cooling system
“And if you think about that potential, I think even crazy ideas are somewhat warranted,” he continued. “Even if the idea sounds a bit mad off the bat, I think it’s important to think of alternatives to what we have. So we have crazy ideas, but we’re not crazy.”
WFG estimates that, depending on climate and a building’s window-to-wall ratio, its technology can reduce energy bills by around 25 per cent compared with standard windows.
The startup’s first commercial projects, an industrial building in Hungary and a residential development in the US, are now under construction.
It has completed two prototype buildings using the technology, named Water House 1.0 and Water House 2.0 (pictured) – the former a small cabin in Hungary and the latter a pavilion at Feng Chia University in Taiwan.
The technology prevents solar heat from entering through windows, reducing the need for active cooling
Gutai said water-filled glass allows buildings to be heavily glazed without compromising sustainability.
“The whole idea comes from the recognition that moving energy is much, much cheaper than heating or cooling the space,” said Gutai, who previously worked for prominent Japanese architect Shigeru Ban and in Kengo Kuma’s research lab at the University of Tokyo.
“That really excited us about water-filled glass,” he added. “We wanted to actually give architects the opportunity to build even completely fully glazed buildings if they want to without any compromise on sustainability.”
Because the system uses off-the-shelf glass and parts, WFG claims it does not greatly increase the embodied-carbon impact of construction as well as being easy to manufacture.
The company also insists its system has no impact on the aesthetics of the building inside or out, since water absorbs most energy from the part of the light spectrum that is invisible to humans.
A monitoring device is fitted to clean the water automatically, with maintenance checks required once a year.
A thin layer of water sits between panes of glass and absorbs heat from sunlight
In colder climates, the water-filled glass system uses triple-pane windows, the outer cavity filled with argon insulation to prevent the water from freezing during winter.
Capable of heating water up to temperatures of around 40 degrees Celsius, the technology can be connected to a conventional heat pump or boiler.
WFG has also developed a retrofit version of its product, where the system can be fitted behind existing glazing without having to destroy the windows already in place.
British startup Water-Filled Glass has developed panes of glass filled with water that use sunlight to power a “crazy” energy-saving heating and cooling system.
Water-Filled Glass (WFG) aims to use the patented technology, which it estimates can reduce energy bills by 25 per cent, to make heavily glazed buildings more sustainable.
Twelve architecture projects to look forward to in 2023
Other stories in this week’s newsletter include a roundup of architecture projects to look forward to in 2023, Sony’s reveal of its first-ever electric car and an attack on Oscar Niemeyer’s government palaces in the Brasília riot.
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Spotted: Moss is a highly efficient, natural air filter, attracting tiny dust particles to its fine, dense leaves. The plant biodegrades, stores, and eats airborne particles such as soot, ammonium salts, carbon dioxide, and pollen, all of which are harmful to human health. Moss also absorbs warm air, producing a local cooling effect as heat evaporates.
Greencity Solutions tested 16,000 species of moss to find the most effective ones for use in moss wall biofilters. Living walls are becoming more common architectural features, and with the new moss version, cities have an improved ability to bring the fresh smell and clean air of a forest to crowded, busy locations. After removing the pollution and decreasing the temperature of the air, the moss releases cleaned, cooled air. The effects can be measured up to one and a half metres away from the wall.
Greencity’s three solutions are the CityTree, CityBreeze, and WallBreeze. All three designs use internet of things (IoT) technology to track local conditions and footfall and are connected to a proprietary, cloud-based data platform that automates irrigation and tracks plant growth and health.
The CityTree is a freestanding pillar with a bench that cleans air from all angles. The pillar includes space for an LED screen or poster, allowing owners to customise and change messaging. The CityBreeze is a slimmer design created for high-traffic areas such as train platforms, shopping centres, and car parks. One side is a moss wall and one side is a 75-inch LED screen for high-resolution communication. The WallBreeze is fitted onto a wall, and up to 25 panels can be connected for management by a single account on the data platform.
Springwise has spotted a range of green wall innovations, with some more experimental and in early stages, such as 3D printing with soil, and others that are well-developed, policy-focused solutions seeking immediate, permanent change. That latter includes an organisation in Spain working with local governments to expand the numbers of green roofs.
Following a record-breaking heatwave in the UK and western Europe, with climate change meaning that sweltering temperatures are likely to become more common, Smith Mordak outlines 10 ways to design buildings that remain cool in hot weather.
Want to design cool architecture? Of course you do! Follow these principles and you too can be a cool designer of cool spaces that don’t heat up our climate – not cool.
Photo by Lara Swimmer
Ground-source heat pumps and low-lying buildings
Low-lying buildings stay cooler than tall skinny ones because the ground maintains a pretty even temperature. Ground-source heat pumps essentially supercharge this process by facilitating depositing heat in the ground in summer and drawing heat from the ground in winter.
Host House in Salt Lake City (pictured), was designed by architects Kipp Edick and Joe Sadoski to be a net-zero building. It is mostly one-storey and uses a ground-source heat pump as one of its measures for controlling temperatures during the extremes of the Utah summers and winters.
Find out more about Host House ›
Photo by Oskar Proctor
Exposed thermal mass
Internally exposed thermal mass is a mini version of this same concept. Thermally massive materials store heat or coolness, reducing the temperature difference between day and night.
Concrete has been soaring high on the thermal mass scale for far too long. The argument goes that while you’ll emit a load of carbon dioxide making the cement, the energy you’ll save by not having to heat and cool the building as much will make up for it. This is as annoying as those ads for excessively packaged nutrient-free foodstuffs that claim you’ll ‘save’ money buying them because they’re not quite as overpriced as they were yesterday, when you’d be better off not buying them at all. Concrete does not have a monopoly on thermal mass.
Hempcrete – a mix of hemp shiv (the woody stem of the plant) and a lime binder – is a highly insulating material that also provides that much sought-after thermal mass without the huge upfront carbon cost. It’s also vapour permeable and absorbs and releases moisture depending on its environment, so it controls humidity. Other low-carbon thermally massive materials include stone, rammed earth, and unfired bricks.
Flat House in Cambridgeshire (pictured), is a zero-carbon house designed by Practice Architecture that makes extensive use of hempcrete inside and out, especially on the exposed interior walls.
Find out more about Flat House ›
Photo courtesy of BVN Donovan Hill
Air cooling
If you create a labyrinth of thermal mass in your basement then not only do you get to say “want to see my labyrinth?” when people come to visit, you also have a no-need-to-plug-in coolness store always at hand. If you slowly pass outside air across the cool walls and of your cool underground maze before bringing it into inhabited spaces, then you’ve supercooled your passive ventilation without any chillers.
The Australian Plant Bank in New South Wales (pictured) uses an underground thermal labyrinth to capture and retain the heat of the day or the cool of the night, preventing sharp temperature fluctuations and warming or cooling the building by up to 7.5 degrees centigrade. It was designed by BVN Donovan Hill.
Find out more about the Australian Plant Bank ›
Photo by Tommaso Riva
Heat extraction
As well as bringing in the cold we need to get rid of the heat. Even if you unplug everything, people still generate heat that needs removing, especially if there are a lot of people in your building.
Of course, unless your building is in a climate that never gets cold, even at night, this heat extraction needs to be controlled. Heat rises, so tall spaces that allow the heat to collect out of the way, openable windows at a high level that let the hot air out, and chimneys with wind cowls that use the passing wind to draw the air up through the building are all good tactics.
The image shows The Arc gymnasium in Bali designed by Ibuku, which uses vents at the apex of its roof to allow warm air to escape. Find out more about The Arc ›
Photo by Hufton + Crow
Keeping heat out
To reduce the amount of work the building needs to do to extract the heat or bring in the cold, well-designed buildings keep the heat out. If you don’t have a thermal labyrinth in your basement (yet!) then having a heat exchanger on your air intake/extract means you’re not losing heat in winter or gaining it in summer.
A huge way to prevent the temperature indoors from being a slave to the temperature outdoors is insulation: lovely thick insulation made from biobased, non-polluting materials. Couple this with double or triple glazing and a fat green roof (both insulating and brilliant for biodiversity) and you’re laughing.
The image shows the Maggie’s Centre for cancer patients in Leeds, designed by Heatherwick Studio and built with natural materials. Its roof is covered in plant species native to the woodlands of Yorkshire. Find about more about this Maggie’s Centre ›
Photo by Leonardo Finotti
External shading
We’re getting better at insulation, but what we’re still mostly rubbish at as a profession is external shading. This keeps the heat off the building in the first place.
Shading needs to consider orientation. Vertical shading is best for east-and west-facing facades where the sun is lower. Overhangs and horizontal shading are best for the highest sun (from the south in the northern hemisphere and north in the southern hemisphere).
Deciduous trees are also handy, given how they shed their little shading units (aka leaves) in the winter when you appreciate the sun’s warmth. Other dynamic shading options are shutters and awnings that you can move or open and close. The shading is best outside because then the heat never gets indoors, but at a push, internal shading that’s pale – so that it reflects the heat back out – is better than nothing.
Aleph Zero and Rosenbaum designed the Children Village school boarding facility in northern Brazil (pictured) with a large canopy roof framed by cross-laminated timber to shade the building.
Find out more about Children Village ›
Photo by Rasmus Hjortshøj
Green urban environments
Designing a cool building is not just about the building, but also about designing a cool environment for your building to be in. The urban heat island effect can increase temperatures in urban areas by more than 10 degrees Celsius compared to their rural neighbours. We desperately need to tackle this if we’re to ease the health impacts of heatwaves and reduce the energy demand of buildings.
This means fewer heat-emitting things in urban spaces, ie fewer cars and fewer air conditioning units pumping out hot exhaust into the streets. It also means not leaving heat batteries lying about in the sun: towns and cities tend to be stock-full of thermal mass in the form of masonry, paving, and tarmac that soak up the heat from the sun and hang on to it tightly. We need less tarmac and more green, and when we retrofit our buildings with external insulation it would be great if this was reducing the amount of masonry cooking in the sunshine.
The Karen Blixens Plads public plaza in Copenhagen (pictured), which was designed by COBE, covers sheltered parking for bicycles and features neutral-coloured tiles frequently interspersed with planting and trees.
Find out more about Karen Blixens Plads ›
Photo by Wayne W
Shaded public realm
Trees are magic. Not only do they provide shade, habitats for a gazillion species, share information and nutrients with each other and other plants through mycelium networks and improve soil health, but they also cool the air around them via evapotranspiration.
This is where the trees use the heat energy in the air to evaporate the water in their leaves. We don’t need to leave this all up to the trees, however: moving water (from waterfalls to misters) has the same effect, as when the water evaporates it leaves the air around it cooler. We can also rip off the trees’ shading technologies: keep the sun off external spaces to prevent those hard, thermally massive materials from cooking us like pizza stones.
The image shows a street in Shanghai.
Photo by Víctor de la Fuente
Pale roofs
A final dig at tarmac and its buddy, the bitumen roof, is that they are dark and so they absorb heat. If these surfaces were paler, they could help reflect heat back out of town.
Casa Banlusa (pictured) is a white-roofed villa in Valladolid designed by architecture studio Sara Acebes Anta.
Find out more about Casa Banlusa ›
Photo by Charly Broyez
Low-energy living and reduced embodied carbon
As well as ‘fabric first’ and alleviating the urban heat island effect, let’s remember that facilitating behaviours that allow us to adapt to a changing climate is also part of this story. For example, how do the acoustics inside your home allow you to work odd hours, or how can you design spaces not for fixed activities, but the flexibility to allow inhabitants to move around a house as the sun moves across the sky?
Reducing the amount of heat being generated inside a building is a concept that bridges behaviour change and building design. Pretty much everything we plug in is pumping out heat (even a fan, depressingly) so we need more efficient appliances but also to just switch stuff off. If there’s an alternative way to do something without energy, consider it!
Mars Architectes designed the apartment block in Paris (pictured) entirely from wooden modules that are also clad in timber.
This brings us almost to the end of our survey of principles for being a cool designer. There’s just one final thing, arguably the most important.
Definitely do all that stuff above, but if you want to be a really cool designer, you need to not only massively reduce the energy needed to make your projects comfortable and healthy, you also need massively reduce the embodied carbon of your projects. In other words, you need to throw off the duvet that is all those greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
To our human eyes, carbon dioxide and methane are as transparent as oxygen, but if we could see infrared light, we would see the atmosphere getting more and more opaque. Those greenhouse gases are causing global heating by blocking infrared light from busting out into space, like when your duvet hides the fact that your phone is still glowing when your family thinks you’re asleep. Not cool. Not cool. Not cool.
Find out more about this apartment building ›
Smith Mordak is a multi-award-winning architect, engineer, writer and curator and the director of sustainability and physics at British engineering firm Buro Happold.
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Spotted: There are around 95,000 registered auto-rickshaws in New Delhi. The colourful vehicles tend to blend in to the landscape. But one vehicle stands out – the rickshaw owned by Mahendra Kumar. The rickshaw driver has installed a garden on the vehicle’s roof – planted with more than 20 types of plants.
Kumar is hoping that the mobile rooftop garden will help keep the interior of his vehicle cool. In fact, he came up with the idea two years ago, during the peak of the summer season. Due to global warming, temperatures in New Delhi have been rising, at times exceeding 45 degrees Celsius, and last year saw India’s highest average maximum temperatures in 122 years. Against this backdrop, any relief would be welcome.
To create his garden, Kumar first laid a thick sack onto the rickshaw roof as a base, then added soil and seeds. He simply waters the plants from a bottle a few times a day. Not only does the garden provide a natural cooling effect, but it also gives residents a nice break from New Delhi’s ubiquitous concrete.
Indian taxi drivers are not the only ones who have converted cabs to gardens. At the height of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, when tourism in Thailand had collapsed, the Ratchapruk Taxi Cooperative in Bangkok began growing vegetables on the roofs of idled taxi cabs, and farmed frogs in piles of abandoned car tyres. The vegetables and frogs helped to feed out-of-work drivers and the surplus was sold for extra income.
As the world heats up, innovative ideas like these are going to be important in mitigating the danger. Some other ideas for mitigating the heat island effect that we have seen recently include a platform that assesses urban heat island effects and designs solutions and the use of living roofs on large buildings.
