City Respiration Skyscraper

Designed by Czech architects Pavlína Doležalová and Jan Smékal, the spiky, spiraling skyscraper is covered with algae and is designed to clean polluted city air. The "City Respiration Skyscraper" is a helicoidal structure reaching 240 meters high. The primary structure is a concrete ribbon covered with the air-cleaning algae. It is then covered with concrete three-spike units inspired by sea sponges. The unique helicoidal shape allows it to act as a chimney, drawing warm, polluted air from below and pulling it upward, both filtering and oxygenating it. It is thought that a strategically placed network of these skyscrapers in the most polluted areas of a city could clean the air of that city in a few weeks.