The Dutch agency Enviu, working in collaboration with architects from Dutch company Döll, has been working on a design for an Sustainable Dance Club. This technology, now in use, will enable dance clubs to run at a very low environmental impact and with reduced carbon emissions. This is all possible thanks to a new technology which enables the floor itself to generate electricity through absorbing the energy expressed by the dancing bodies. It works through a system of tiny accumulators, similar to pressure sensors, which are embedded in the floor. The physical energy of a dancer is captured by these sensors and utilized to run the facilities of the club, such as the lighting and speakers. This is just one example in a growing trend of technologies and products which seek to harvest and reuse the energy produced by the human body. Other examples include clothes which, through integrated devices, harness the movement of the human body and translate it into useable electricity. There is also the novel concept of a toilet flushed with human sweat. Increasingly, we will be witness to technologies which function in many ways analogous to parasitic or symbiotic organisms in finding new ways to use our own anatomy.
Tony Canonico