Article: http://www.thesunportal.com/tech-patented-sunportal-technology.php
Technology:
- Optical devices that allow natural daylight to reach and illuminate any indoor environment. Can include deep plan building spaces or underground spaces that other conventional day lighting systems can deliver.
- These devices capture and transport maximum sunlight from a heliostat with a parabolic dish concentrator to a luminaire via a series of special optical relay lenses with minimal effect on the cost of heating or air conditioning.
- These devices track the sun throughout the sky at all times and optimize the amount of sunlight that can be captured and used.
- In the Lowline Lab project, once sunlight is captured it is distributed through a series of tubes down to the warehouse where it is spread to the plants and life underground. This technology will help support the underground park.
The organizational stakeholders that would need to use this technology are: the community, vendors, and the government when it comes to regulating the park.
The first step in deploying this technology for an underground park would be choosing the best day lighting system for the specific project, as SUNPORTAL has different methods of delivering light into spaces. The next step would be collecting the funding to support the project. The following step is the testing of the technology in the space because plant life will depend on the reliability of these devices.
Thanks for this article Derrick! I think technologies like this can really help ensure a balance between high density development and the need for sufficient green spaces – particularly in cities such as Singapore where land is already such a scarce resource. The low line lab, located in an old abandoned warehouse is also a great example of adaptive reuse of space.
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To piggyback off of Nicole’s comment, this technology was recently used in NY’s LowLine, where the city built an underground park out of an abandoned trolley line. By directing natural light below the street, cities have another alternative to create year-round underground parks. This will create new habitats for plants and potentially agriculture, and give us some desperately needed green infrastructure. Since it is scalable, it can be used in large and small projects.
http://www.thesunportal.com/project-public-lowline.php
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