For years now, designers and architects have been reimagining the ways biology might seamlessly merge with design and architecture in order to create more sustainable cities and products, resulting in new-fangled ideas like biomimicry, 'genetic' architecture that can respond to stimuli, and even mushroom-based 'mycotecture'.

Perhaps not surprisingly, algae might be part of the solution too, as a UK-based consortium is demonstrating with an intriguing installation of algal curtains that can help buildings clean polluted urban air. Created by Photo.Synth.Etica -- a collaborative group made up of ecoLogicStudio, UCL's Urban Morphgenesis Lab and University of Innsbruck's Synthetic Landscapes Lab -- the AlgaeClad system captures carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and stores it in real-time.

© NAAROAccording to architects Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto of ecoLogicStudio, the large-scale algal curtains are architectural add-ons, capable of storing the same amount of CO2 as twenty large trees (about one kilogram of CO2 per day):