Are Hairy Buildings the Future of Go-Green (Eco-friendly) Architecture?

May 31, 2013

Architecture is a field which presents a sea of options allowing newer, creative design ideas to emerge with the time. There have been many evidences to illustrate this particular nature of architecture. In other words, it is a field of innovation, spontaneity, and liveliness.

Recently, a famous Sweden based architecture firm named Belatchew has come up with an innovative idea of outfitting highly energy-efficient piezo-electric toupee on a Stockholm building structure. This latest proposal has triggered many questions in the minds of people all around the world like can we see hairy buildings in our neighbourhood or can we live in a hairy house someday in the near future?

Image Credits: Grist.org
At this point of time, we can say that it is not practical to expect hairy buildings to occupy the driver seat in the go-green or eco-friendly architecture design field, as the technology is fairly nascent and moreover it is just a proposal. The basic concept is that millions of energy-efficient piezo-electric hairpieces blow in the breeze, accumulating energy from the thin-air to power the structure of the building.

There are some challenges which need to be addressed before implementing this eco-friendly design idea. The main challenges to this new proposal include the difficulty of cleaning piezo strands, noise that could be generated by piezo strands especially on a breezy day etc. Furthermore, piezo electricity isn't extremely efficient, and that could be another concern.

However, it is this kind of innovative, out of the box thinking that will open up the way to alternate sources of energy. If the Sweden architecture firm can arrive at some technical answers, and measures to manage all these possible difficulties, then we could see hairy buildings sometime soon.

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