Lichen loves to grow on tall, rocky mountains. But it doesn't know the difference between that and a skyscraper. Covering our buildings in it would keep them cool for free, if one artist's experiments work out.
Singapore's aspiration to become the world's garden city notwithstanding, most metropolises are the antithesis of green. If we're going to become more energy efficient, cities must become denser still, which means even more concrete and fewer plants. But what if we could turn the stone and brick faces of all those buildings into a habitat for one of nature's most tenacious symbiotes?
Lichen often lives on the bare face of rocks and trees, inhabiting territory where no other living thing can even get a toehold. It's a unique collaboration of fungi and algae, in which the fungus provides structure and protection to the algae, which feeds itself and its host through photosynthesis.
Lichen is light colored, and plants that respire help cool anything they're attached to, so it's not so far-fetched to imagine that if you could pull it off, a lichen-encrusted building wouldn't just look like a ship you just pulled off the ocean bottom: It would also help keep itself and the city around it cool.
In order to tease out whether this is even possible, Elizabeth Demaray, a professor of fine arts at Rutgers-Camden, figured out how to turn lichen into a slurry she can "paint" onto buildings. One building on 14th street in New York City is even contemplating covering its entire facade with the stuff.
"Lichen can live where plants cannot, and it can thrive without human intervention or maintenance. Also, anyone can "plant" it--all you have to do is smear it on the outside of your building," Demaray said via email.
In nature, lichen thrives in arid, exposed environments like mountaintops. The granite and sandstone facades of New York City's buildings are reasonable facsimiles for these environments. Nothing in nature cultivates lichen on its surface deliberately, but for p...
[Source: Fast Company]
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