The project, called CLOUDROOM, is a futuristic, outdoor, sustainable classroom designed by Spanish architecture firm Ecosistema Urbano, and built-in Columbus, Indiana, USA. It’s a pavilion that aims to active a rethink of educational spaces and raises awareness about today’s climate crisis.

CLOUDROOM is a bioclimatic design for an outdoor classroom, a space covered by an inflatable 'cloud' that floats over a wood structure. The classroom offers a shady and breezy outdoor learning area for multiple activities in the public space, somewhere between the school and the city.
Ecosisitema Urbano, led by Belinda Tato and José Luis Vallejo, installed fans to inflate the cloud and generate a natural breeze that ventilates the space and pushes hot air up on hot days. The filters purify the air that enters the CLOUDROOM.

The pavilion is illuminated from within, creating lighting scenarios that represent the earth's climate change over the past century, using three environmental parameters: rising temperatures, deforestation, and CO2 levels. The information of the last 120 years is transformed into color codes that feed the three LED light levels. The lighting raises awareness among the space's users about climate change and our shared responsibility in affecting its course.

Additionally, the built structure is made of materials (printed fabric and wood) that will be reused and recycled once the installation is dismantled.


CLOUDROOM. Bioclimatic Outdoor Classroom by Ecosistema Urbano. Photograph by Hadley Fruits

CLOUDROOM. Bioclimatic Outdoor Classroom by Ecosistema Urbano. Photograph by Hadley Fruits
 

Project description by Ecosistema Urbano

CLOUDROOM is an installation that rethinks spaces for education and raises awareness about today´s environmental challenges, as it creates a bio climatically comfortable space for learning, playing, and sharing.

Located in the Central Middle School lawn of Columbus (Indiana, USA), CLOUDROOM is an inflatable CLOUD that floats over a wooden structure, creating an inviting atmosphere to carry out a variety of activities between the school and the public space, encouraging learning through direct experience.

CLOUDROOM is based on two pillars: an ecological approach and a social one.

CLOUDROOM an ecological space for education
CLOUDROOM generates a comfortable microclimate by providing shade and breeze. The blowers that inflate the canopy generate a natural breeze that displaces the hot air upwards, expelling it out of the structure through the central oculus. The air that enters the inflatable is purified by two filters that remove contaminants and then expelled into the center of the pavilion through textile nozzles, creating a healthier atmosphere underneath.

The internal face of CLOUDROOM is populated by words extracted from the 1992 UN Rio Declaration on Environment and Development blended with words from a survey conducted among students from the school about their preoccupations, hopes, and dreams for the future. The exterior face is printed with the canopy of the maple tree, characteristic of the Indiana ecosystem, a species in danger of extinction due to climate change.

CLOUDROOM is illuminated from within, creating lighting scenarios that represent the earth's climate change over the past century, using three environmental parameters: rising temperatures, deforestation, and CO2 levels. The information of the last 120 years is transformed into color codes that feed the three LED light levels. The lighting raises awareness among the space's users about climate change and our shared responsibility in affecting its course.

Additionally, the built structure is made of materials (printed fabric and wood) that will be reused and recycled once the installation is dismantled.



CLOUDROOM a social space
Designed with the input of students and staff of the Central Middle School, CLOUDROOM responds to the need to provide spaces for both education and social interaction in learning centers in the context of the COVID pandemic and growing global concern about climate change.

CLOUDROOM functions as a mediator of public space between school users and the Columbus community. Located at an intermediate scale between the school and the city, it transforms the Central Middle School lawn into an active spot for students, their families, and the entire Columbus community.

The architectural qualities of the CLOUDROOM evoke elements of classical architecture such as the dome and oculus, becoming a spatial experience from a minimal material structure.

The canopy is accompanied by yoga balls, which serve as light furniture and allow users to use the space in various ways. From leisure to science class, or as a theater space, CLOUDROOM can host learning and recreational activities for the school and programs for the overall Columbus city. 


 
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Architects
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Ecosistema Urbano. Belinda Tato and Jose Luis Vallejo, Project Directors.
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Design team
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Alejandro Fuentes, Marco Rizzetto, Elena Castillo, Antonella Milano, Hala Nasr, Jorge Izquierdo, Adrian Sánchez, Maria Vittoria Tesei, Alberto Garcia, Alina Nazmeeva.
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Collaborators
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Engineering Consultant.- Theta Consulting, Tim Franklin. Lighting Design & Programming.- glowC.
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Client
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Fabrication Wooden structure.- Ignition Arts.
Inflatable Structure production.- Landmark Creations.
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Dates
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Construction.- 8.2021.
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Location
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Central Middle School, Columbus, Indiana, USA.
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Photography
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Ecosistema urbano is a Madrid based group of architects, urban designers and professionals specialized in urban innovation projects, operating within the principles of design thinking at the intersection between different disciplines: architecture, urban design, engineering, sociology... 

ecosistema urbano was co founded in 2000 by architects Belinda Tato and Jose Luis Vallejo who have been the directors since then. Their approach can be defined as urban social design by which they understand the design of environments, spaces, dynamics and tools in order to improve the self-organization of citizens, social interaction within communities and their relationship with the environment. Ecosistema Urbano has used this philosophy to design and implement projects in urban contexts from different countries: Norway, Denmark, Spain, Italy, France, China, Russia, Paraguay, Bahamas, Ecuador, Bahrein, Honduras, USA, etc...

Ecosistema Urbano is specialized in urban consultancy projects (architecture and urban design), public space quality assessment and leads urban transformation processes (from initial conceptualization to final implementation) working for local, national governments and multilateral agencies. In recent years, their research has focused on the design of public spaces and its climatic conditioning, for contexts and climates as diverse as Bahrain or Norway. They have also designed and developed methodologies that incorporate participatory mechanisms with digital tools to allow collaborative network design.
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