Breathing is a vital activity to sustain life and acts as an interface between the environment and ourselves. Collective ecologies of breathing practices are inherently connected to the socio-cultural production of space and the health and adaptability of living systems. Aério is a soft machine conceived as a macro-breathing organ that explores forms of cohabitation of species through the ecology of breathing and investigates health as a public value. The project links three main fields of inquiry: the public realm, socio-technical systems, and health. The macro-breathing organ acts as a cleaning/filtering/processing air device through the performative textile material embedded and woven into the surface. The embedded material technology is developed through an advanced polymer integrating Wearpure.Tech, a 100% natural mineral compound that has the property to mineralize primary greenhouse gasses polluting the air we breathe. It can adsorb and neutralize CO2, NOx, and VOCs, converting them into active minerals.

The “Air Ecologies” machine tracks in real-time the material performance at the micro-scale, visualizing the quantity of CO2 absorbed (PPM) correlated to humidity values. The visualization of data produced aims to generate and increase collective awareness of the interconnectedness between the micro and macro scales of our ecosystems. Aério is a prototype for public space that acts as a device that can re-layer urban surfaces to provide scenarios for co-dependency of living systems. By mapping prototypical public spaces, the project aims to predict scenarios for dynamic absorption of CO2 in the public realm by interpolating data relative to material technology, human occupation, density, and surrounding air ecologies. By linking social and technical systems, the project has the capacity of being simultaneously a measuring, processing, and visualization device for the public realm and, therefore, for forms of collective living.

Aério was exhibited at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale in the Italian Pavilion “Resilient Communities.” The project is now part of the MACCA Museum in Peccioli - Tuscany, Italy.