Raising awareness for indoor air quality and pollution
Project
Ambient Green
Award
Bronce Nail (ADC)
Collaboration
ambientworks.io (UK Startup)
Course
Interaction Design – "Digital measurement of the world"
Team
Max Voelkl, Melissa Strekert
Type
INTERACTION
DATA
PRODUCT
Tools
ARDUINO
SHAPR3D (CAD)
LASER CUTTER
ILLUSTRATOR
Year
2025-Present
As our campus recently received a brand new laser cutter we had to give it a spin for production and custom engravings. Made with love for detail.
Together with my semester's projects we won the ADC bronce nail award in the category "Experiment / Creative Technology"!
I still pursue Ambient Green within the founders program "GO!" in order to launch it as a startup soon. So far I was able to present my project at UFIS2026 and to publish a paper at iWOAR2026 conference.
Research
Thanks to Ambient Works, who provided us with sensitive environmental sensors, we were able to conduct extensive research on the air quality within lecture halls. Turns out the quality was incredibly poor most of the time. Furthermore, I stumbled across mosses being used in architecture to fight air pollution, which is why we started experimenting on how we could integrate it into our product.
Concept
Following the Double-Diamond Concept by our professor Michael Zöllner, we explored various concepts of shapes and technical approaches.
Hardware
The final product consists of two 3D printed inner shells which we cladded with plywood for a more natural look. On the inside is an LED strip which is controlled by an arduino based on a CO2-sensor's values. The light is diffused by frosted acrylic glass. The plywood and acrylic glass were precisely cut with out laser cutter.
Learnings
MVP Prototyping
The most valuable skill: quickly building prototypes to test whether ideas are truly working. Through this project I learned a lot about crafting, coding and pitching my work.
I love Moss
Nerdy, I know. Tho this is a reoccuring pattern which I noticed. I love tech, I also love nature and the best results are created when combining two very polar things.