Pleated Pleats
Creators: Yihan Chen, Kayla Lee Hayes, Roger Labib, Dalia Sadeq
Supervisors: Jonathan Knowles & Peter Yeadon
This project was developed within an interdisciplinary advanced design studio at RISD that offered an opportunity for students to experiment with responsive biomaterials, meet some experts, tackle the problem of water scarcity, and develop innovative climate solutions for tall buildings in arid regions. As a partnership between the departments of Architecture and Industrial Design, teams of students designed and prototyped some working atmospheric water generators (AWG), and some tall buildings that the AWGs were designed to be a part of. Building on the United Nations’ recognition of water as a human right and UN Sustainable Development Goals, the studio responded to global challenges of water scarcity caused by climate change, drought, and declining freshwater resources.
Pleated Pleats positions the pleat as a structural and environmental instrument, an active mediator between structure and skin in a 1500-foot atmospheric water tower in Abu Dhabi. Five bundled tube-structures rise as infrastructural trunks, mimicking the aerial root systems of local mangroves. The structure of each split tube is outbound: the split tubes’ column grid meets the core at different elevations.
Concept design sketches for the tall building in Abu Dhabi that harvests atmospheric water
At ground level, the space between the tubes is shaded outdoor space. When separate, the tubes take on individual, varying programs: a library, a market, a salon, a boxing ring- up to the 23rd floor. At their convergence, each floor is a compound live/work program to promote contact between different users. The convergence and torque capture and accelerate prevailing winds, transforming the tower into a vertical wind guide. At the base, a wide-span cable net establishes a ground condition with the surrounding neighborhood. As the structure ascends, this net thickens and transitions into a pleated double-skin façade hosting the atmospheric water generator.
Large facade mock-up model with AWG unit locations
The water generator’s design was formally inspired by the skyscraper's tapering geometry, with the heated surfaces on the interior pleated like the tower’s facade to increase surface area of absorption. Housed in the double skin facade, on one side are nitinol springs that can open or close the system for absorption and condensation stages. On the other side is a panel to let draft air out when the system is absorbing.
Working prototype of an AWG unit; drawings of the absorb/desorb cycles
When the system is condensing, both panels will close and the pleated surfaces that the super hygroscopic polymer films (SHPF) are laminated to will begin to heat. As the pleated surface heats, a fan sends cold air through a copper tube at the very top of the model.
The hot, moist air evaporating from the SHPF will come into contact with the tube at the top, condense on that surface, and run down the gutter into a drainage tube and back into the tower. The material choices for the model were not only functional, but meant to remain consistent with the materials and color palette used within the other models.
Making hygroscopic biocomposites; final studio exhibition
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