The Warka Water Tower
1. Sustainability Problem: Water and Health
In today’s world, a growing population, global climate change and inefficient water infrastructure raises concerns for equitable access to clean drinking water. Currently it is estimated that 783 million people lack access to potable drinking water. Lack of potable drinking water contributes to a range of public health concerns such as spread of disease and illnesses, deaths, and inability to grow food.
2. Technology: Warka Water Tower
The Warka Water Tower was developed by an Italian architect named Arturo Vittori with his studio Architecture and Vision. It serves as an innovative technology to address concerns for access to water in developing countries in addition to their accompanying public health problems.
Summarized below are some key takeaways from this technology:
- Warka Water Tower was developed to collect water vapor from the air in areas that lack sufficient water infrastructure for remote or developing communities
- the device functions at the highest capacity in areas where humidity and fogs are high
- depending on the conditions, the tower can harvest from 10 to 20 gallons of water daily
- the tower can be built without electrical tools
- this design is the winner of the World Design Impact Prize in 2016 and mass production is aimed for 2019
3. Organizational Stakeholders:
Stakeholders in this effort that would be relevant are the existing team of designers, architects, and developers. Additionally, marketing and investment teams would be beneficial to help Warka Water meet their goal of mass production in the year 2019. Outreach and construction teams should be assembled to promote these structures in developing countries to educate community members on how to construct and use the tower along with its other functions such as the Warka garden, drone, toilet, and house.
4. Next Steps
Warka Water’s next steps should involve assembling an investment and marketing team to gain funding for their innovative designs. This will allow them to bring the tower to mass production and enhance funding in their design and development of other Warka products. They should additionally consider NGO partnership to install and promote acceptance of this technology in developing countries.
Check out the following links below for more information!
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/this-tower-pulls-drinking-water-out-of-thin-air-180950399/
http://www.warkawater.org/
https://thewaterproject.org/water-scarcity/water_stats
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Some elements of bio-mimicry are used in the design; the development team used cues from termite hives and cactus spines to inspire the design of the tower.
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The Warka Tower can also be fitted with an edible garden at the base of the tower that can use part of the water collected to create food for the community. However, this garden would supposedly could only feed 1-3 families and it’s unclear how much of the drinking water would be diverted to feed these 3 families.
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The Warker Tower can also be seen as a societal community benefit as it creates a social space for the community to gather for events, education, and meetings. It also can have photo-voltaic panels attached to serve as charging stations.
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