A three-dimensional water vapor canopy; Yellow Dust is a sensing and sensuous infrastructure that monitors, makes visible and partially remediates particulate matter in the air through variable clouds of yellow mist.
Composed by Do It Yourself sensors and using off-the shelf construction systems, it aims to contribute to collective forms of making air pollution visible.
In contrast to scientific and policy making versions of air monitoring, where the devices remain invisible and sensing only about the data, Yellow Dust engages with the toxicity of the city by opening up the monitoring process in various ways: revealing the monitoring technology and its measurements, communicating the quality of air pollution not through screens or numbers, but through a sensuous experience with the data, and conditioning the environment by humidifying and cooling. It also provides the information to replicate the project in other contexts, as an open source urban infrastructure.
Authors: C+arquitectos/In The Air (Nerea Calvillo with Raúl Nieves, Pep Tornabell, Yee Thong Chai, Emma Garnett, Marina Fernandez)
Collaborators: Victor Viña.
Developed for the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 2017, with the support of Acción Cultural Española and an impact ESRC IAA grant from University of Warwick and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).