Indoor air quality is a complex phenomenon that needs to be tracked and experienced daily. AirOffice proposes a unique prototypical office space, an experimental indoor garden where employees are invited to get involved in the air purification process powered by living microalgae cultures.
The world’s first AirOffice is now permanently installed at Haleon’s headquarter in Nyon, Switzerland. The space captures and stores carbon dioxide daily while purifying indoor air and re-metabolizing the by-products into organic biomass. Effectively the AirOffice system transforms the particles of pollution that our cities expel into nutrients for living cultures of cyanobacteria. Once grown, these can be harvested in order to re-enter the urban metabolism as raw material.
In office environments, microclimatic pockets form with unique concentrations of particles and polluting gasses. The kind of air we breathe while working at our desks affect the likelihood of us getting sick, our long-term health and ability to concentrate. The issue is still poorly understood compared to outdoor air pollution and varies regionally, daily and affects every person differently. For this reason, AirOffice can adapt to different conditions and evolve in time, as more monitoring data become available.
Designed like a modular and completely reversible system, made by a lightweight, recyclable timber structure, the AirOffice system houses several one-metre-tall lab grade glass photobioreactors, each filled with 10 litres of living photosynthetic microalgae.
In Nyon, the AirOffice is actualized in a bio-technological garden space of approximately 50sqm and hosts 12 reactors that adsorbs 240g of CO2 and release 180g of Oxygen producing 84g of biomass daily. Desks for informal meetings and several plants occupy the central space while more conventional personal working desks are arranged along both sides.
This type of direct interaction has important implications in terms of increasing employees' awareness of the characteristics of the air quality in the space they inhabit for many hours daily. Gardening and engaging with the algae cultures in terms of feeding and extracting biomass offers opportunities for relaxation and focus. The gentle bubbling sound of the aeration system creates white noise that is both relaxing and helps concentration. AirOffice creates a new kind of interior garden, providing a different kind of collaborative space for work.
Air Office is at the beginning of an unfolding process that we hope will influence every aspect of office interior design, including lighting, aeration, microclimatic filtration, sound, and, of course, construction materials. This influence will extend to the behaviours of the people who inhabit the space throughout the day, as being productive at work takes on a new set of ecological meanings starting from the control of the air we breathe.