Aeropillar at dusk in a Dubai plaza: a perforated canopy glowing violet over a container core, people seated around its base

Urban Air
Purifier

Industrial design competition. Air purifiers are grey boxes nobody wants on their street. We turned an 18ft purification core into a landmark people sit under.

1st place, Arklite Design Challenge 2026, and a ₹2 lakh prize

Hide the machine, keep it breathing

INFICON is a city-scale air filtration system: two 10ft shipping containers stacked 18ft high, packed with an electrostatic filter, UV lamps, a PCO screen, fans and IoT controls. The machine worked. What it lacked was a face. Arklite Speciality Lamps asked MIT-WPU's design students for an exterior that hides the metal box without blocking a single inlet, survives years of dust and weather, and feels at home in India, South America or Europe.

As Team Vayu we answered with two directions, one civic and engineered, one natural and symbolic, and the proposal took first place with both.

Client
Arklite Speciality Lamps, with Filtron Tec
Team
Team Vayu: V. Varnika, Mrunal Bhosale, Archana Singh, Pranshu Jena
Brief
Four-week industry design challenge, MIT-WPU School of Design
My role
Main idea, ideation, concept development, material study
Result
1st place and ₹2 lakh, for both concepts

Where I steered

  1. The main idea

    The starting thought: a purifier people approach, sit under and recognise, not a box they walk past.

  2. Ideation

    The early sketches behind both forms: the canopied pillar and the blooming lotus.

  3. Concept development

    Turning the pillar and the lotus into full concepts: how air moves through them, how they sit in a street, how they change by city.

  4. Material study

    Choosing what they are made of: recyclable perforated aluminium, a powder-coated steel frame, flat-sheet parts that are cheap to replace.

Aeropillar

The purifier as a piece of street furniture you can walk up to. Air is drawn in all round a seated plinth, cleaned in the stacked container core, and let out through a perforated canopy that also throws shade.

  • Plinth. A 360° air intake built into public seating.
  • Core. The two containers: filters, sensors, lighting and service access.
  • Canopy. Clean air out, shade below, a silhouette you can spot from the road.
Concept sketch of Aeropillar: a mushroom canopy over an LED-screen column, beside the bare container core
Aeropillar by day in a business district, people sitting on its plinth
Aeropillar at night on Pune's FC Road, the canopy glowing gold and an AQI panel on the core
Aeropillar inside a mall atrium with advertising panels on its core

One structure, many cities

The frame never changes. Each city gets its own skin of graphics, light and screen content, so localising costs a print run, not a redesign. The core can carry advertising too, which helps pay for it.

Pune
Heritage, sport, street culture
Bengaluru
Governance, technology, café culture
Tokyo
Anime, ramen, futuristic pop
Dubai
Arabic geometry, luxury, night spectacle
Aeropillar in Tokyo with a pastel canopy and an anime-patterned core
System board: perforated canopy, lighting ring, two container modules, the plinth and the service access sequence

Serviced in four moves

The outer panels are the doors. A technician reaches filters, fans, sensors and wiring without touching the structure, which keeps repair time short.

  1. 1Unlock the panel
  2. 2Open the core
  3. 3Service or replace
  4. 4Close and secure

Facade in recyclable 3003-H14 aluminium with city-motif perforations, a structural steel mast, HEPA-13 and carbon filter trays, and a UV-stable powder coat.

Blooming Air

If purifying air is natural, the form can be too. The lotus grows out of dirty water and stays clean, which is exactly what the machine does for air. It is also India's national flower, so nobody needs it explained.

Its four petals are four storytelling surfaces. In Delhi they would carry the Qutub Minar, the Lotus Temple and the city's street food, laser-cut into the metal.

Hand sketches of the lotus: petal patterns, airflow openings, night glow and dynamic shadows
The lotus by day in a Bengaluru IT park, its perforations casting patterned shadows over curved benches

By day sunlight through the cut patterns draws the city on the ground, and the curved benches become a shaded place to breathe.

The lotus at night outside a Pune mall, glowing from within

By night it glows pastel pink while the air is clean and pulses white when pollution rises, so anyone can read the air quality from across the street.

Three lotus purifiers lit blue, green and pink

Bloom only where it pays

Not every street needs a landmark. The same core ships in three levels, so a city spends on the skin only where people will see it.

  1. The Core

    The purifier body alone.

    Industrial areas, hidden alleys

  2. The Lotus

    Adds the petal skin, seating and city art.

    Parks and neighbourhoods

  3. The Smart Lotus

    Adds screens, light shows and colour change.

    Malls, IT parks, tourist spots

The lotus purifier in a European piazza beside the Leaning Tower of Pisa

Abroad, the flower changes with the country's own flora while the system stays the same.

Pranshu receiving his certificate of excellence from the Arklite and MIT-WPU panel

First place

Both concepts went to the jury together and took first place. The jury praised the balance of impact and practicality: how the air moves, how a technician gets in, whether it can be built, how it looks by day and by night, and how people use it.

₹2 lakh, presented 10 June 2026, Pune

Four certificates of excellence for Team Vayu, Group G
Team Vayu holding their certificates in a lift mirror selfie

Thank you to Mr. Vikram Bapat of Arklite for the brief, Mr. Vaijnath Rode for his design feedback as competition coordinator, Mr. Ganesh Jadhav and Ms. Shweta Gade for their support, and our Dean, Dr. Suman Devadula.

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