According to Otegui, There Is No Box

Nano promises much. There has been talk of nano solar we can paint on to things, nano solar we can weave into textiles and many other variations on the nano-this or that theme. Now, European designer Agustin Otegui has radically reimagined siding designing, a form of solar turbine filter siding made of mesh netting that can be stretched over existing objects. Green building meets Star Trek? 

The Nano-Vent-Skin (NVS) is a web of approximately 1” squares of interlaced micro-turbines that are photovoltaic and filter CO2 from the air as wind turns them. The key to NVS’s design are the microorganisms within the mesh that fix the CO2 and transfer energy, yet to be developed but similar to the organisms that now can transfer biomass into ethanol. On his website, Otegui explains his system more precisely: “The outer skin of the structure absorbs sunlight through an organic photovoltaic skin and transfers it to the nano-fibers inside the nano-wires which then is sent to storage units at the end of each panel. “

He says that his goal is to use nano to improve upon the infrastructure we already have. “It seems that in order to be greener you have to build the most pharaonic building with the biggest wind turbine on top … the biggest solar power plant…or build a new city …because the ones we already live in are not green enough. Why don't we start thinking on a smaller scale and apply it to existing buildings, houses and structures (tunnels, road barriers, etc) to generate energy.”

Though Otegui’s vision is missing key elements- such as the nanotechnology and microorganisms to turn it into reality- the steps he has taken to think radically differently are critical. We should not fail to be creative in our solutions; we must be more creative than we are now. Sure, hydrogen may be far away, and sure, nano has yet to justify its hype, but the potential these technologies, and others that some young engineer has scratched onto the back of a cocktail napkin, are what will end up changing out world. Because our problems are of a scale we have never encountered before, so our solutions should be as well. We cannot solve these new problems in the same old ways, and there is utility in covering technologies like this. They seem far fetched now, but as we do more and more to purposely innovate, we are able to diminish the distance between imagination and reality.