core.form-ula

For those of you who live in a space with no access to windows…you maybe interested in the ANDREA designed by Mathieu Lehanneur and David Edwards.  ANDREA is a natural purifier that uses plants to bring fresh air into the space.  Not a bad start, but would be interested to see a module version of this within the space to produce a featured wall. Enjoy>>

As described in Living Filters in Urban Design, to appear in Ecological Urbanism (edited by Mohsen Mostafavi, 2009), ANDREA elevates the science of pure air into an art form by bringing fresh air and stylish design into the home and office.

1. Transforms any household plant into an effective air cleaner for your home or office
2. Cleans air locally and rapidly, therefore can be turned on and off throughout the day
3. Uses any household plant (sold separately)
4. Absorbs and metabolizes noxious chemicals
5. Biochemically transforms waste
6. Ozone-free operation
7. Low power consumption
8. No replaceable filters
9. Complements any décor

Any kind of household plant can be used as the filtration agent, offering freedom to select the foliage that best suits the motif of any part of your home. Simply put, it’s where form and function come together beautifully.

ANDREA is perfect for any room in the house. It is especially effective in high-use areas where air can stagnate, and harmful gases gather, such as bedrooms, home offices, kitchens & dining, family and living rooms.

Breathe easy. ANDREA is a revolutionary new air cleaner engineered to significantly improve the air filtration capacity of natural plants. This living filter accelerates room pollutants through the active infrastructure system of a plant to continuously clean and oxygenate the rooms in your home. Based on experiments performed by RTP Labs, Andrea improves the efficiency of formaldehyde removal from the air relative to plants alone by 360%. Relative to HEPA and carbon filters, comparison between the RTP Labs data and literature data show an improvement in formaldehyde filtration efficiency of 4400%. These data confirm that while plants alone in an interior setting are more efficient than HEPA and carbon filters at removing toxic gases from the air, they are significantly less efficient than Andrea. Even more important, the rate of gas removal by Andrea is, according to the RTP Labs data, over 1000% faster than for plants alone. That is, Andrea dramatically accelerates the efficiency of air cleaning relative to plants alone (see results).

ANDREA employs both active plant filtration, along with water and soil to provide a multistage system that cleanses air from harmful toxins that can irritate and be harmful to your lungs.

It naturally purifies air by drawing it with a whisper-quiet fan to propel it through the leaves and root system of a plant, then out through water and soil filtration and back into the room environment.

Since the late 1980s scientists have sought to improve the efficiency of living plants to naturally clean the air of harmful pollutants. ANDREA advances on these efforts with world-class design, elegant simplicity, and improved filtration. ANDREA continuously draws polluted air from  the environment and passes it across living surfaces that absorb and metabolize gaseous pollutants. The biochemical transformation of waste, through the plant’s natural metabolic activity, eliminates the pollution beyond simply collecting it on filter surfaces.