Potential energies

Project

269190

Status

Submitted

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NEW EUROPEAN BAUHAUS RISING STARS : concepts or ideas submitted by young talents (aged 30 or less)

Project title

Potential energies

Full concept/idea title

Description

Our relationship to energy is daily : turning on a light, or opening the tap on a radiator. These experiences of energy are technical, dematerialized, miniaturized. Through different energetic experiences, I explored more direct ways of consuming energy, revealing potential energies, present around us. How to interact with them, until you can feel them ? My project consists of 3 objects : a solar shower, a natural limestone air cooler and a brushwood powered oven.

Where is your concept/idea being developed or intended to be implemented in the EU?

Please provide a summary of your concept/ idea

Our relationship to energy is daily : turning on a light, or opening the tap on a radiator. These experiences of energy are technical, dematerialized, miniaturized. Through different energetic experiences, I explored more direct ways of consuming energy, revealing potential energies, present around us. How to interact with them, until you can feel them ? My project consists of 3 objects : a solar shower, a natural limestone air cooler and a brushwood powered oven.  

Please give information about the key objectives of your concept/idea in terms of sustainability and how these would be met

I have first experimented a short hot shower thanks to a garden hose let under the sun. I have reinterpreted this phenomena trough the drawing of a garden shower. By wrapping up 30 meters of hose which represents 8 Liters of water, it made a 1 minute shower. In 1 hour, the shower loads itself at the sun and becomes a one minute shower. Depending on the region, the shower will have a different color: a green or black anodization in Brittany for instance, that will absorb all the Uv's of the sun, and a light blue anodization in south Italy. The second object uses the ancestral principle of evaporative cooling. The transformation of water, from the liquid state, to the gaseous state, consumed energy, that is to say heat. The technique is ancestral, used in many hot regions. In Morocco, the stone fountains of the interior courtyards evaporate the water little by little, allowing to refresh the air. " In Sicily, porous terracotta tiles are sprinkled with water to cool the interior of houses. In reference to traditional techniques, which use natural materials, I wanted to reproduce this phenomenon in an air cooler, on a domestic scale, thanks to a porous material. The final object is a natural limestone air cooler. It is crossed by water, then evaporated on the surface of the rock. The object consists of several slats, allowing to size the object and therefore the cooling capacity. The third object uses the heat emitted by the compost. Freshly cut hay heats up to around 150° F. I decided to harness this energy, currently unused in the composting centers, to turn it into a low-temperature cooking oven. Together with a chef, we organized the first meal cooked using «brush energy». The food is vacuumed, then inserted into the oven in contact with the hot compost. 

Please give information about the key objectives of your concept/idea in terms of aesthetics and quality of experience beyond functionality and how these would be met

In the countryside, I refined my sensitivity and learned to pay attention to natural elements. I observe, as a spectator, spontaneous manifestations of energy in our environment. The almost magical character of certain phenomena fascinates me; smoke escaping from a pile of brushwood , or the coolness in contact with a block of stone in the middle of summer. So much energy circulation in which we are permanently in contact, without paying attention. 

Please give information about the key objectives of your concept/idea in terms of inclusion and how these would be been met

I'm betting on a slower, more measured, more understandable, and more essential experience of consuming energy. Where some of my proposals could seem experimental, even anecdotal, when i started the projected, they appear to me, after the lockdown,  as being totally feasible. Not with the aim of optimizing, or improving, but simply and humbly to give access to simple and available energies to whoever would like to use them  

Please explain the innovative character of your concept/ idea

By using these low tech technologies, I do not pretend to innovate, but to seize ancient know-how, ancestral techniques, and recontextualise them in our period. 

Please detail the plans you have for the further development, promotion and/or implementation of your concept/idea, with a particular attention to the initiatives to be taken before May 2022

The first two objects have been prototyped. They work and there is not much left to test them by a larger number of people. The bauhaus price would be for me the opportunity to communicate on the project, so that it is used by the greatest number of people.

By ticking this box, you declare that all the information provided in this form is factually correct, that the proposed concept/idea has not been proposed for the New European Bauhaus Rising Stars Awards more than once in the same category.