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“Human beings have an innate need to connect with nature: this phenomenon is called biophilia”
The environment that surrounds us influences our habits, our choices and regulates our sleep-wake cycle. The plants that are placed in our spaces promote concentration, help reduce stress and positively affect our health. Every creative, analytical and learning̀ activities are facilitated by the proximity of greenery, and the same applies to the workers’ engagement and satisfaction.
The International WELL Building Standard cites biophilia as a qualitative and quantitative parameter.
In 2000, the World Health Organization recognized a healthy indoor air quality as a fundamental human right, with the document “The Right to Healthy Indoor Air”.
On average, we spend the 90% of our time in indoor environments, where the volatile contaminants produced by the people occupying the space are exacerbated by building materials, furniture, air fresheners, cleaning and personal care products, which can all generate indoor environmental pollution. Health effects can be both short-term and long-term, and have different levels of severity.
PNAT developed and patented an innovative system of botanical filtration, using the plants as “sanitizing” elements, capable of extracting pollutants from indoor air. It was called the Air Factory®: a replicable, scalable bio-machine whose performance is measurable.
In April 2022, the inside of Accademia’s greenhouse was converted and equipped with tanks featuring Stomata technology, which helps the filtration of air within the substrate, reaching the roots of the plants and the complex system of microorganisms that are primarily responsible for degrading target pollutants. Moreover, the leaves absorb the leftover pollutants, degrade them, and convert them into other compounds useful for plants. The sensors measure the data about incoming and outgoing air in real time, measuring the removal of the pollutants.
The unique feature of Accademia’s Air Factory is the coexistence of plants found in coffee plantations with those normally chosen for botanical filtration.
Each Air Factory® is equipped with a sensor capable of measuring the quality of the incoming and outgoing air in real time in order to promptly quantify the air purification action and be able to correlate it to any known agents present at times of greatest concentration of pollutants. After 24 months we can estimate that the total values of the pollutants removed to date are the following:
– 2386mg fine dust
– 2406g volatile compounds
The Air Factory® is a multipurpose tool that allows us to actively act on the quality of indoor air through purification, improve the liveability of spaces thanks to the biophilic action but it can also be thought of as an important monitoring tool which, thanks to the sensor component, allows us to promptly know the values of the main air pollutants present in the spaces in which we live, giving us the opportunity to understand and perhaps even intervene on the sources of direct pollution.
In Accademia, the greenhouse is the “green heart” of the facility, sitting at the centre of the old factory; it is capable of purifying the entirety of the air contained inside the building, guaranteeing very high wellbeing throughout the whole environment.