Light Sensitive Water Extraction Panel | Settlement Without
MIT Media Lab, City Science, 2019
iF Talent Design Award 2020
Provide accessibility to clean water in Katanga, Togo
Team member: Ayawavi Attisso, Ilia Yazdanpanah, Moulshree Mittal
Keywords: City research, Togo, Water, Sustainability
Tools: Arduino prototyping
Led by City Science group at MIT Media Lab, the course this year focuses on informal settlements. Katanga is located at the sea-shore of Lome, the capital of Togo. It is positioned right next to the main port of Togo. The people here have taken up fishing as their profession as sea is the easiest to access. The men here fish while the women smoke the fish to sell them further in the city markets.
However, this pace has been dealing with high water-borne diseases. The water in and around Lome has been contaminated for years because of lack of sanitation practices and proper sewage infrastructure. Thus, this area commonly has Cholera as a problem. Hereby, we propose a technology which keeps them independent of the city to get clean water. We wanted to create Change Without Change by adding to Katanga’s resident lives in a way where they do not have to adapt or change their lifestyles at all. Therefore, we come up with a new roof structure which would just be needed to install once and would not hamper their day-to-day lives.
This technology incorporated biophilia, namely Lichen. Lichen absorbs water from the air, which in this case is highly humid throughout the year. The high sun exposure that this settlement gets, is also put to use to extract the Lichen absorbed water. The panel on which the lichen is placed consists of a light-sensitive material over which a high friction material like canvas is attached. The light-sensitive material enables the product to respond to sunlight and pivot as required to release water. Further the panel structure includes pipe system which would move the collected water down towards ground for manual collection and usage by the residents.