Like the earlier work, this latest project in Dessau will rely on form-giving narrow floor plates to enhance natural lighting and on thermal flues to promote natural air flow through the building. Ground water will cool the building. In a unique attempt to reduce diesel fumes and other air pollution at a major construction site, the Massachusetts Highway Department will clean up smoke- belching heavy construction equipment on the Big Dig project in Boston. All told, the state will retrofit 25 percent of the equipment on the Big Dig, eliminating pollution equivalent to that from 1,300 diesel buses. The state's farsighted voluntary action, says an air pollution policy advisor, could help it comply with federal air pollution standards which are likely to toughen soon.
Water flows continuously over the porous lava rock, through which air is drawn.
The water carries away airborne impurities that the ecosystem then breaks down and absorbs. The high-order ecosystem includes about 8,000 plants of more than 250 species as well as insects, mollusks, fish, frogs, and other amphibians. Following the success of this first large-scale trial, other versions of the breathing wall ecosystem are springing up in places like clothing retailer Club Monaco's Toronto headquarters. And, plagued with air quality problems, the Queens University Department of Education is planning a more extensive version of the system which supplies and returns air to an ecosystem in a rooftop greenhouse. Walker is on the Faculty of Environmental Design at The University of Calgary.