The Freshwater Factory Skyscraper, from French designers Nicolas Chausson, Gaël Desveaux, Jiao Yang Huang and Thomas Jullien, is an ingenious water-generating skyscraper for use in the country.
Taking into account that farming uses more than 70% of the worldwide freshwater consumption, the designers created a skyscraper concept designed to supply farmers with fresh water for crops in the arid Spanish region of Almeria in the Mediterranean.
“There is only about 1% of liquid freshwater left and the UNO and the World Water Council estimate there might be a crisis affecting half the worldwide population by 2030,” explain the designers of the genesis behind their project. “Freshwater will be a major stake in the 21st century. Indeed, the production of a daily food intake for a human being requires 3000 liters of freshwater (793 US gallons) and the annual rate of freshwater needs is 64 billions cubic meters (2,260 billion cubic feet).”
The Freshwater Factory Skyscraper consists of circular tanks filled with brackish water housed in spherical greenhouses. Using tidal energy pumps, the water is distributed throughout the skyscraper into tanks of mangroves where the trees ‘drink’ the brackish water and create freshwater via the perspiration from their leaves. The freshwater then evaporates in the spherical greenhouses and condensates into dew that is harvested into freshwater tanks.
The Freshwater Factory Farm received a Special Mention in eVolo’s 2010 Skyscraper Competition.
Via eVolo
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