Deployment | Airco

ALPHA TEST IN CBE

“{...} in 1950s New York, it didn’t matter what elected officials wanted, but what Robert Moses wanted”

- Robert Caro, The New Yorker, 1998

Exploration

Proposed by Robert Moses in 1945, CBE’s construction lasted from 1948 to 1972 and caused severe urban decay in the Bronx community.

Exploration

As one of the busiest and most congested highways in New York City, CBE is the perfect and 'fertile' ground for AirCO intervention.

Built for Flexibility

AirCO cyborg-01 is a mechanization of a natural process - crystallization. It functions as a cybernetic organ for architecture and the environment by grafting it onto the subject and feeding on the CO2 released from mechanical systems, factories, and vehicles. The unit responds to the CO2 concentration values in the surrounding atmosphere and captures CO2 through the crystallization process. The unit is designed to be replicable, flexible, and deployable.

Built for Flexibility

AirCO cyborg-01 is designed with the capacity for different stacking formations. Ball joints allow the overall form to be compressed or stretched in all directions, allowing flexibility to fit in varying environmental conditions - horizontal, slope, and vertical surfaces.

The crystallization process is facilitated by atomizers that turn guanidine sorbent liquid into mist and spray onto the surface for quicker crystallization to capture CO2 from ambient air.

The pneumatic enclosure allows controllable degrees of contraction actuated by the data from CO2 sensors. As CO2 concentration increases, the unit
blows air into the enclosure allowing a larger surface area for crystallization.