Ghent University creates self-regulating microclimate with sub-tropical trees and plants
Typically, air quality in large rooms is only poor due to ineffective air-conditioning systems. Ghent University's bio-air conditioner should eventually change that.
Building Biospheres is the name of the university's pilot project. In winter 2024–2025, scientists carefully selected sub-tropical trees and plants and brought them together in a greenhouse-like structure. Using sap flow and dendrometers, they monitored on a screen how the exotics behaved, for example, in terms of their water consumption, their transpiration, and sap flows. All turned out well: the plants regulated the temperature themselves over a longer period, which showed that it was to their liking. It was that bit more comfortable in the greenhouse environment than outside.
In April, the prototype will move to the Venice Architecture Biennale for around six months. If it turns out that, even at higher temperatures, the arrangement lives up to expectations, it is likely that young designers from all around the world will want to install living nature in large buildings, such as airports and stations.
Who knows, maybe a Belgian project that is aesthetically pleasing as well as environmentally friendly will eventually make those energy-guzzling, sub-standard and ugly air conditioners a thing of the past.