via www.mathieulehanneur.com
The air quality indoors is worse than outdoors. Plastic used for our daily furniture production emits pollutants (benzene, formaldehyde, and trichloroethylene) whose levels are maximal during warm and humid periods.
Crucial for the health of the NASA's astronauts, who stay in orbital station in a polymer-saturated environment, the American agency has set up an air purifying system by plants research program in the early 80's. With Bel-Air , this program is now completed and optimized by french designer Mathieu Lehanneur, together with the Harvard University scientist David Edwards, and ready for domestic use.
Bel-Air is a mini mobile greenhouse that continuously inhales the
space-polluted air that goes through tree natural filters: the plant leaves, its roots, and a humid bath before rejecting it purified.
"Bel-Air" (News about a Second Atmosphere)" is currently presented in Paris until January 14, 2008 at the Laboratoire, a new Parisian creation site initiating collaborations between artists, designers and scientists.
"Bel-air" will be presented at the MoMA (New York) in the exhibition
"Design and the Elastic mind" starting next February.
Mathieu Lehanneur takes part of the "Design Now" selection, edited by Taschen this fall, as one of the 80 designers the most innovating in the world. Graduate from ENSCI- Les Ateliers in 2001, he explores the technological advances for their functional possibilities and their capacities to produce magic. His research works emphasizes on the relations and the invisible frictions that govern our relations to the daily environment.
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