firsttime
BG
Submission Title
The Moist Brick
Challenge Year
2020
Team Details
Location
La Crescenta, CA
School/Organization
Orange Cube Art
Award Status
1st Place
Team Category
High School
Directory Project Image
The Moist Brick
Project Info
Team Members
Na Yeon Kim, Ryan Joongi Cho, Asen Ou Kim, Yeunseo Seo, Min Sung Park
Coach(es)
Jai Won Lee, Haeun Kim
What is the problem your team addressed for this challenge and how is it related to climate change?
One of the direct problems that humankind will face due to climate change is extreme changes of wheater. The temperature is keep growing, and so the number of air conditioning systems. It is not too hard to expect the tragic cycle of more hot weather brings even more demand for air conditioning and thus, even more, need for power. The world has new solutions for cooling in buildings due to the rising climate, but most of the applications are often impossible to approach without a specialist.
What does your design solution do? How does it solve or improve the problem you selected?
The idea is to make the green building more widely used in the general public. Noticing that those eco-buildings are perceived as a special building to the general public, which they think it is impossible to apply in their own buildings, we designed a building block system that people can easily introduce natural cooling to their ‘usual architecture’. Each block, which can be used just like other constructional blocks, collects water during the night and utilizes them for evaporation cooling during the hot day.
How was your solution inspired by nature? What organisms did you learn from and how did what you learned inform your design?
We wanted to find a way to use the most effective way in terms of water collecting. Through asknature.org we could find exciting usage of capillary action in Texas horned lizard. Through more studies, we learned how the pattern of its skin makes the capillary works well, which led us to come up with the idea of making a building block that uses capillary action for evaporation cooling. Also, we learned some plants use hair-like surfaces to collect water. Inspired by them, we designed the bricks to have a hairy surface to maximize the water collection.
Judges Quotes
Judge's Quotes

“I enjoyed seeing how the Designmatter team took a problem, looked at the nature-inspired termite mounds and other technology that already exists, and identified the inherent limitations of the existing solutions. They identified a niche and designed a basic building product that could be used by anyone, not just a professional builder. The Moist Brick is an intriguing and unique design that could be implemented in different applications.”

— Laura Arndt, Director, Global GreenSTEM

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