Tech Shout!

Spain is known for its brilliant architecture that can be seen on many of the buildings, monuments and statues in the country. Now, the 2008 World Expo that is to be held in Zaragoza, Spain will see a rather unique installation that has to do with water.

The installation called the Digital Water Pavilion will be a building that has walls made from water. Not only that; the walls will be programmed to show images and messages.

The interactive Digital Water Pavilion will be designed by a team of architects and engineers from the Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Within the “water walls” will be an exhibition area, a café and various other public spaces.

According to Carlo Ratti, head of MIT’s Senseable City Laboratory, “To understand the concept of digital water, imagine something like an inkjet printer on a large scale, which contains droplets of falling water.”

The roof of the Digital Water Pavilion will be supported by large pistons that can move up and down. It will be lowered when the weather is too windy, or when the pavilion is closed.

The entire Digital Water Pavilion will measure 10 meters by 50 meters by 5 meters high when the roof is completely raised.

The idea is that when one comes across this structure, he or she will not notice any walls, but will see water flowing in its place. The structure will sort of disappear and the roof, covered with a thin layer of water will resemble a pond.

Both the exterior and interior walls will be formed by a row of closely spaced valves placed along a pipe suspended in the air. The valves can be rapidly opened or closed, producing a curtain of falling water with gaps at specified locations.

The mechanism is quite simple in words, but when the real test will be when the whole structure is put to test, with water and all.

According to MIT, the structure is like a pattern of pixels created from air and water, instead of illuminated points on a screen.

Interestingly, the water used for the Digital Water Pavilion in Zaragoza will be continuously recycled.

In the words of the MIT architects, “The entire surface becomes a one-bit-deep digital display that continuously scrolls downward.”

Incidentally, there have been previous attempts to digitally control water droplets. But, MIT claims that its plan is the first to create such walls for real.