This year, my partner, Lucas Fung, and I are planning on creating 3D printed air filters that resemble plants. It seems like every year we hear stories of wildfires ravaging through California, and how they continuously damage the air quality across the state. In large scale, highly-populated cities, it is extremely difficult to find the space for natural air filters (tree an d other plants) to help alleviate the air quality. Because of this, both communities with already poor air quality and the many people who live with respiratory issues struggle to find solutions to this seemingly reoccurring issue. With our project, communities who are not able to maintain the plant life to serve as natural air filters can help solve this issue, will have a viable solution, as our air filters would be accessible in public spaces and in the comfort of people’s homes.
We originally came up with the idea during the summer, and with the devastating tragedy of the Maui wildfires, we thought that it would be a relevant topic to address this year. It was an idea that seemed both practical and original. At this stage, the biggest challenge will be figuring out how different air filters function and how we can scale that down and replicate it in a much smaller model. It will be a challenge to see how we can incorporate all the integral and necessary components of the high quality air filters that are already on the market. We hope that we can get a prototype that we can test and tinker with, and hopefully we will be able to successfully create our idea.