Canari

Project

303411

Status

Submitted

Award category

You want to submit

NEW EUROPEAN BAUHAUS AWARDS: existing completed examples

Project title

Canari

Full project title

Description

Canari draws its inspiration from the canary, a bird that was the coal miners companion and alerted them when the air was contaminated.
Once connected to the internet, the lamp will the lamp will fetch data from public API to determine the air quality (PM PM10). The LEDs are dimmed according to local air pollution measures available on citizen science sites such as sensor.community or smartcitizen.me. The project was released under a Creative Common License with online tutorials.

What was the geographical scope of your project?

Does your project address mainly urban or rural issues?

Does your project refer to a physical transformation of the built environment or other types of transformations?

Has your project benefited from EU programmes or funds?

Which or fund(s)? Provide the name of the programme(s)/fund(s), the strand/action line as relevant and the year.

Has your project won an EU prize?

Your project is fully completed?

When was your project implemented?

How did you hear about the New European Bauhaus Prizes ?

On whose behalf are you submitting the application?

Please provide a summary of your project

Air pollution is omnipresent in our cities. Government institutions and universities have long been working to measure and map it. More recently, local projects and initiatives have also enabled citizens to analyse and learn more about this complex phenomenon. But too often, the data remain in libraries or laboratories and are, at best, disseminated on the internet. Where it is available, it remains incomprehensible to the uninitiated. Once again, air pollution remains in the ether, invisible.

The Canari project aims precisely at revealing air pollution.

In the past, in coal mines, canaries were carried away as a signal, alerting miners when the air became unbreathable. Seeing these birds choke (often due to too high a concentration of carbon monoxide), miners could escape before it was too late. Similarly, the Canari Project wants to raise awareness of air pollution by turning toxicity data into light signals. Using the coal mine analogy also means associating the past with the present, the mine with air pollution, faith in industrial progress and the damage it has caused.

Canari makes air pollution visible, by making the reading of data related to pollution instinctive through the light patterns that a lamp displays, their speed, and their amplitude. The objective is not only to give information to the citizens but rather to sound the alarm and alert them to the need to act at that moment, at that place.

In this spirit, the Canari project joins the movement of citizens, associations and researchers who mobilised in recent years to demand cleaner air. By raising awareness of the geography and scale of the problem, we hope to encourage community involvement and action towards a more sustainable future and put pressure on decision-makers for rapid improvements in this area.

This prototype lamp is part of a longer trajectory on air quality representation supported by Trakk through its edutainment programme.

Please indicate the main themes of your project with 5 key words

Please give information about the key objectives of your project in terms of sustainability (including circularity) and how these have been met.
Please highlight how the project can be exemplary in this context

Air pollution is sometimes called the “invisible killer”. Whereas in the past, smoke from factory or incinerator chimneys was a fairly reliable indication of the presence and location of toxic air, today air pollution is mostly imperceptible to the naked eye. On the contrary, a sunny day with blue skies is a condition often associated with high pollution.

Yet air pollution is omnipresent in our cities. Government institutions and universities have long been working to measure and map it. More recently, local projects and initiatives have also enabled citizens to analyse and learn more about this complex phenomenon. But too often, the data remain in libraries or laboratories and are, at best, disseminated on the internet. Where it is available, it remains incomprehensible to the uninitiated. Once again, air pollution remains in the ether, invisible.

The Canari project aims precisely at revealing air pollution.

Please give information about the key objectives of your project in terms of aesthetics and quality of experience beyond functionality and how these have been met.
Please highlight how the project can be exemplary in this context

In the past, in coal mines, canaries were carried away as a signal, alerting miners when the air became unbreathable. Seeing these birds choke (often due to too high a concentration of carbon monoxide), miners could escape before it was too late. Similarly, the Canari Project wants to raise awareness of air pollution by turning toxicity data into light signals. Using the coal mine analogy also means associating the past with the present, the mine with air pollution, faith in industrial progress and the damage it has caused.

Canari makes air pollution visible, by making the reading of data related to pollution instinctive through the light patterns that a lamp displays, their speed, and their amplitude. The objective is not only to give information to the citizens but rather to sound the alarm and alert them to the need to act at that moment, at that place.

Please give information about the key objectives of your project in terms of inclusion (equal opportunities, public participation, citizen engagement, co-design, universal design, accessibility, affordability, etc.) and how these have been met.
Please highlight how the project can be exemplary in this context

In this spirit, the Canari project joins the movement of citizens, associations and researchers who mobilised in recent years to demand cleaner air. By raising awareness of the geography and scale of the problem, we hope to encourage community involvement and action towards a more sustainable future and put pressure on decision-makers for rapid improvements in this area.
 

Please explain how these three dimensions have been combined in your project.
Please highlight how this approach can be exemplary

By combining citizen science, academic expertise, SME ressourcefulness and design aesthetics, we are convince that Canari can be exemplary.

Please give information on the results/impacts achieved by your project in relation to the category you apply for

Canari was awarded the Citizen Science Prize in the CRQLR award in 2021

Please explain how citizens and civil society were involved in the in the design and/or implementation of the project.
Please also explain the benefits that derived from their involvement.

This prototype lamp is part of a longer trajectory on air quality representation supported by Trakk through its edutainment programme that brings together academics, designers and local businesses around a science-related theme. This prototype is the result of a collaboration between academics (Nicola Da Schio and Tarek Barakat), a designer (Guillaume Slizewicz), a creative technologist (Martin Pirson) supported by the Trakk team (Marine Warzée, Laura Latour, Nathalie Cimino).

Please explain what kind of global challenges the project addressed by providing local solutions

Air quality

Please highlight the innovative character of the project as compared to mainstream practices in the field of the project.

The lamp is made of brass, glass, and custom 3D-printed parts and includes a microcontroller connected to real-time open data on pollution that controls 7 LEDs. Once connected to the internet, the lamp will fetch data from public API to determine the air quality (PM2.5 and PM10). The LEDs are dimmed according to local air pollution measures available on citizen science sites such as sensor.community or smartcitizen.me.

Please explain to the potential of transferring the projects’ results or learnings to other interested parties and contexts.
Please provide clear documentation, communication of methodology and principles in this context.

The project was released under a Creative Common License, and tutorials on building and connecting the lamp can be found online.

 

Is an evaluation report or any relevant documentation available?

If you would like to upload additional documentation, please upload it or write it below

By ticking this box, you declare that you are not in in one or more of the exclusion situations foreseen under Article 136 of the Financial Regulation.

By ticking this box, you declare that all the information provided in this form is factually correct, that you assume sole liability in the event of a claim relating to the activities carried out in the framework of the contest, that the proposed project has not been proposed for the New European Bauhaus Prizes 2022 in any other category or strand and that it has not been subject to any type of investigation, which could lead to a financial correction because of irregularities or fraud.

By submitting your application, you guarantee that you are the author or have the rights to proceed with the application and to authorise the use of the project, concept, idea, and that you have obtained any necessary consents, licenses or assignments from third parties and included copyright notices when necessary.

By submitting your application, you understand that all the applications that meet the eligibility requirements will be shared for the purposes of the selection processes, and notably published on the secured platform https://prizes.new-european-bauhaus.eu/ and for the purposes of the promotion of these on the New European Bauhaus website and/or other European Commission communication channels. In this sense, the applications would be widely available. Applicants should ensure that they present their ideas, concepts, projects, in such a way that they could be shared without giving rise to intellectual property related concerns. If your submission is selected as one of the finalists, it will additionally be shared for the purpose of the public vote that will take place. The European Union is granted a licence to use and share your application with the general public and the official external experts for the purposes of the selection process, including the voting. The European Union has the right to use the images and visual materials and the description provided in the application for communication purposes related to the contest and beyond. Rights granted comprise the right to store, reproduce, display, publish and communicate or distribute copies in electronic or digital format, including, but not only, through the internet. Unless you have disclosed your name, the European Commission has no obligation to share your name when using or disseminating your contribution to the public. The European Union cannot be held responsible in case any submitted idea, project, concept is found to infringe third parties rights. The European Union shall be neither responsible for the use that third parties may do of the applications or related content.