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How Artificial Tropical Islands Could Heat Helsinki Homes Without Emissions

2021-05-09T19:33:17.752Z


The Hot Heart, designed by the architect Carlo Ratti, has been one of the winning projects of the Helsinki Energy Challenge. If built, the archipelago would not only function as a huge radiator for the city, it would also be a perfect tourist destination


The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has continued to grow to new records.

"We must act now" is the phrase that has been repeated at the United Nations for some years.

And that is precisely what Helsinki, the capital of Finland, intends to do, which has planned to reduce its emissions by 80% by 2035.

Far from improving, the climate emergency situation continues to get worse.

Not even the pandemic, its confinements and quarantines, which have locked the big culprits at home for months and allowed certain animals to be seen in urban areas, have managed to improve the data.

Although during the April 2020 confinements daily CO2 emissions were reduced by 17%, by June of the same year they had already returned to pre-pandemic levels, according to the annual

United in Science report

of the World Meteorological Organization.

The Finnish capital launched the Helsinki Energy Challenge at the end of 2020, with which it wanted to find the most innovative and revolutionary projects to achieve it.

One of the winning responses has been

The Hot Heart

(The warm heart), by the Italian architect Carlo Ratti, an archipelago of artificial tropical islands with which he aspires to heat the homes of the Scandinavian capital without emissions of any kind.

But, how is this task achieved in a city that spends five months of the year with negative temperatures and another two around 0ºC?

The islands of The Hot Heart are, in reality, “ten floating water tanks of 225 meters in diameter where the energy generated through renewable sources would be stored and would supply the entire city during high demand seasons”, explains the architect to ICON Design.

This could be the interior of one of the islands of the project that aims to operate without emissions of any kind.

carlo ratti associati

These giant cylinders would have a capacity of 10 million cubic meters to hold the three types of water that would power them (seawater, water from Hot Heart basins, and water in existing heating systems). “Between the three of them they would exchange and transmit heat without mixing. The heat pumps, which work with renewable electricity, will extract heat from the sea (and the sea will cool), this will pass to the Hot Heart basins and finally to the city's heating system when necessary ”, clarifies the architect. According to the project's calculations, it would be enough to cover all the demand (6,000 gigawatt-hours) of Helsinki without emitting greenhouse gases.

The idea of ​​Ratti and his team is the answer to the high costs involved in storing electricity in batteries: "We decided to create a thermal store with the ability to sustainably power the heating system in Helsinki." And the cost difference is abysmal. While saving a megawatt-hour in a battery costs 200,000 euros, in the thermal warehouse the cost is reduced to 200 euros. For this they have combined various systems and needed personnel from all areas. “We have spent months meeting by video call with dozens of people from different continents to analyze and take into account the complexity of the different urban challenges. Hence, collaboration between disciplines is crucial ”.

Ratti and the rest of the architects in his studio have sat down to work with microclimate experts, masters of lightweight structures, visualization designers, engineers, financial analysts and other specialists with the sole purpose of creating a system that is reliable, affordable and capable of store energy from any renewable source.

"We think it could play a key role in many coastal cities around the world," he says.

The sauna baths, an area that aims to include the project of the Italian architect Carlo Ratti Associati

An oasis in the cold

If the project is built, the islands, which would be located off the coast of Helsinki, would not only serve as huge radiators for the city. They would also be a perfect tourist destination. Another source of inspiration for Ratti was the Finnish philosophy of the j

okamiehenoikeudet

, which is something like the right of public access to nature. "It is an idea that is deeply ingrained in their society, yet it is very limited in the winter months when they have freezing weather." So four of the islands are designed to preserve a tropical climate in the cold. "We call them floating forests and they are tropical ecosystems that will simulate jungle areas such as the Amazon, the Congo, Borneo or the Central American region."

To keep these jungles protected from low temperatures, the project has transparent domes (like those in Stephen King's novel, but from which you can enter and exit voluntarily) that cover them. These structures will be responsible for maintaining the humidity and heat of the water cylinders necessary for the tropical atmosphere. Only then can a type of vegetation grow that otherwise could not survive in the area.

The lack of light in the city for much of the year (the night lasts around 19 hours in the winter months) have also been remedied "through a powerful LED technology that simulates the sun."

Finally, these four islands will also have several swimming pools, which serve as the icing on the cake for this attractive and sustainable tourist destination with which Helsinguins and Helsinguins will be able to escape the cold without having to spend half a day locked in a plane.

Diagram of the project of the Italian architect Carlo Ratti.carlo ratti associati

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2021-05-09

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