Anti-Smog is a parasite project set up and developed by Parisian architects Vincent Callebaut on the post-industrial urban structure in the 19th Parisian district to promote the innovations on the theme of sustainable development in urban area in terms of housing or transport. Its role is to apply all the avant-garde renewable energies so as to fight against the Parisian smog.
Text : Vinay Shivhare
Photographs : courtesy the architect
Anti-Smog aims at inventing a new architecture able to disasphyxiate the area in which it is set up. The smog (smoke + fog) is a bluish to reddish haze which is the result of the water condensation (the fog) on the suspended dust combined with the presence of ozone in the troposphere. The smoke is produced in major part by the burning of fossil fuel and is composed of sulphurous gas (such as sulphur dioxide) in addition to the dust on which the water steam contained in the fog condensates itself. This photochemical cloud is associated to many detrimental effects for the health (asthma, infarct, AVC) and for the environment (acid rains, attrition of the building).
Anti-Smog is an ecological prototype of auto-sufficient, depolluting architecture, reactive to its environment and is set up on a Euclidean urban vector. The project Anti-Smog, at the crossing of the fluvial and train ways sets up in the heart of this vector with 3 directions. It is composed of two distinct museum entities with positive energetic results, which means producing more energy than they consume. On the one hand, the ‘Solar Drop’ is a superstructure in polyester and in photovoltaic cells that treadles the ‘Cage’, the double bridge with metallic braces crossing the canal de l´Ourcq. On the other hand, the ‘Winds Tower’ is a helical structure incrusted of wind machines fixed vertically in the future municipal garden on the edge of the water. On the railway, coming from the park of the Buttes Chaumont, after the crossing of the Paris-Bestiaux (the old transit train station of the bovine towards the butchery of la Villette), comes the crossing of the canals. Capturing under its curve the rail bridge of the canal de l’Ourcq, a great white drop with a 250sqm photovoltaic blue roof catches the sunrays to transform them into electrical energies. As a ship’s body, it is built in polyester fibre reinforced with steel bends outlining its main profiles. The whole building is covered by a layer of titanium dioxide (TiO2) as anatase, which by reacting to ultraviolet rays, enables to reduce the air pollution. The ‘Solar Drop’, in addition to being an auto-cleaning building, will enable to absorb and recycle by photo-catalytic effect the cloud of unhealthy effects (Smog) especially coming from the intense traffic of the very close Parisian belt. The superior hemisphere presents a structure deploying itself in net where the alveoli or ears are filled up with glasses and chips of carbon pixels enabling the Anti-Smog to be completely auto-sufficient in energy. Moreover, two planted arches cover the ellipsis on all its length and get the rainwater to provide for the logistical needs of the exhibition centre and its cafeteria. Below this thermo regulating solar roof, there is a huge exhibition and meeting function room organised around a central garden, a phyto-purified aquatic lagoon. The cantilever structure that leans on the beams of the bridge stretches its two bows in the axis of the canal. The access to ‘Solar Drop’ is organised on two different levels. First, a double entrance exists through the existing pedestrian footbridge along the ‘Cage’ and linking both banks of the canal. Then, the second entrance by the vertical core or the banister of the ‘Winds Tower’ gives access to the footbridge at 10m high making the hyphen to the ‘Solar Drop’.
The ‘Winds Tower’, located at the bottom of the vaulting of the Petite Ceinture, on the site of the factory of urban heating, spreads its helical gallery on more than 45 metres of height. The scenographical ribbon unfolds along the banister in console around curved walls of the central bearing core. This core is carpeted of tactile and digital screens beaming the news continuously and containing the stairwell and the elevator. Also of the elliptical plan, the main axis of the tower moves according to one of the canals to take place in the direction of the dominating winds (South-West). Its crystalline glass layer unfolds by an auto bearing layer in fishnet stockings and dissociated of the curtain wall. This second structure in polyester fibre is covered by planted cushions pierced of sinuous slits along almost fifty axial wind machines of Darrieus. The whole set looks like a harmonious vertical park with a vegetable dress in perpetual movement. On the top, the museum way ends with a suspended garden in the sky. With aromatic savours, this perfumed haven of piece offers an exceptional panoramic view on the Parisian east. This ‘Winds Tower’ can also change into a silo containing a spiral of vélib or solar cars on a minimum of ground surface area on the pattern of the ‘Smart Towers’. It would be thus directly connected to the double railway for new promenades without the railroad bowels of the city of Paris.
Anti-Smog is thus an instructive prototype of ecological experimentations. ‘Solar Drop’ and ‘Winds Tower’ implement the most advanced technologies in the auto-sufficient construction to better reveal the applications of the contemporary society. Its energetic results are positive and enable to assure not only the functioning of the centre but also the nocturnal lighting of the banks of the second Bassin de la Villette. Moreover, this project aims at reducing the atmospheric pollution of the area by capturing the CO2 and thus improving the quality of the air. It is a play project, an urban and truly live graft. In osmosis with its surroundings, it is an architecture that interacts completely with its context that is climatic, chemical, kinetic and social to better reduce our ecological print in urban area.
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