Students help Esquivel create water-collecting installation

Gabriel Esquivel, professor of architecture at Texas A&M, collaborated with students at Monterrey Tech to create “Diaphanus,” a combination of the aesthetic and the functional: it’s an architectural installation that resembles a bouquet with laser-cut polypropylene flowers that provided a 1,350-square-foot rainwater collection surface.

“Diaphanus,” he said, “is an example of an architectural skin not only performing a practical function like controlling temperature and light, or in this case collecting water, but creating moods or atmospheric effects through sensations based on aesthetics.”

Esquivel said the rainwater harvesting system, which includes the flowers, carbon filters and thermoplastic transparent hose, had to be completely fused with the design, responding to its aesthetic sensibility and within the limits of available digital fabrication processes.

He and the Monterrey Tech students, who fabricated the piece, researched various methods of digital fabrication techniques and rainwater collection before beginning their design.

Its structure was generated with design software and built with the transparent hose, which also serves to carry the water collected by the flowers. The water passes through carbon filters, then through the piece’s structural network of transparent hoses, ready for water tank storage.