Cloud Refugia

Cloud Refugia is a temporary, lightweight, and adaptive urban intervention conceived as a replicable typology for improving thermal comfort and biodiversity in public space under increasingly extreme climatic conditions. Designed as an Urban Climate Island, the project responds to urban heat through the combined use of natural materials, vegetation, water, and shade, fostering new forms of social interaction within a shared ecological environment.
The installation is constructed exclusively from 30 Garnica Efficiency Poplar plywood panels, assembled into a three-dimensional, modular wall system using precision CNC-cut interlocking joints. The structure contains no metal fixings, screws, or adhesives, ensuring full reversibility, ease of assembly and disassembly, and material reuse. Its lightweight and dry-assembled logic enables seasonal deployment and relocation across different urban contexts.
The stepped geometry of Cloud Refugia integrates planters with flowering species selected to support pollinators, while embedded bee hotels, bird houses, feeders, and water pools extend the habitat to multiple species. This layered configuration generates shaded niches, varied microclimates, and accessible seating surfaces, allowing people to inhabit the installation from both sides while remaining immersed within a living ecological system.
A defining feature of the project is its atmospheric misting cloud, produced by a linear array of misting points along the upper edge of the wall. Through evaporative cooling, the cloud reduces ambient temperatures, filters solar radiation, and protects plants and insects from direct heat stress. This temporary and seasonal atmospheric layer expands the project’s climatic influence beyond its physical footprint, transforming the wall into an environmental infrastructure rather than a static object.
By combining habitat creation, passive cooling, and collective use within a single, demountable system, Cloud Refugia proposes a transferable model for climate-responsive public space. The project demonstrates how small-scale, reversible architectures can produce meaningful environmental comfort and social life, supporting urban resilience through ecological integration rather than technological intensification.