It’s the cleanest place you’ll see — and feel — in Johannesburg, a heavily populated South African metropolis that’s rapidly becoming a global example of environmentally minded urban planning.
Designed and built by a team of architects and engineers, the Palme d’Or Pavilion is housed in a six-story, circular hall where visitors can enter a fully integrated water treatment and recycling system, where each drop of water is re-purposed in myriad ways.
Sterfic (pronounced “tail-fiz”) is a local water company that provides water treatment and recycling services to Johannesburg and a number of other major South African cities. It has recently been expanding into solar-powered recycling plants in Johannesburg and Cape Town, one of the continent’s most advanced infrastructure countries.
The system uses an advanced, C solar dry cell pasteurization process that uses industrial gases and heat from a nearby power plant, the only source of energy in the facility. A sustainable pump system, consisting of individual and system-wide ultra high pressure pumps, ensures an even distribution of water pressure across the entire facility. Because this leaves less chance of corrosion of equipment, the facilities uses 50 percent less natural resources and produces approximately one-third less water than similar, conventional water treatment facilities.
In addition to water re-use, Sterfic and its partners have also installed a hybrid water and energy system at the Palme d’Or pavilion that also integrates solar energy. The building is equipped with a movable digital control system that can flip between both technologies as needed. One side can reuse energy from the sun on hot days, while the other can be used to recharge electric vehicles or power small appliances.
The Palme d’Or Pavilion provides a striking symbol of how culture, business and environmentalism can mix and inform each other in an effort to implement sustainable urbanization. But because this pavilion — along with many others in South Africa — has received major government support, it has also created a thriving ecotourism and sustainability market in which to draw travelers.
Gladys Akabane / Global Post/ARTINFO.com
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