One of the greatest things you can do as an industrial designer with earth-saving aspirations is to find a source of free or nearly-free energy. That’s what Luís Castanheira appears very much to have done here. This is Voltair, a wind power generator comprised of an array of fans set on the median of a highway, each of them turned by the air pushed past by the cars speeding by. The cars that’d be going by one way or another. Brilliant!
The main goal of this project, having had the general idea in mind, was to reduce the complexity of the product as much as possible. In doing so, Castanheira was left with a base that supports a power generator, a body composed of a set of curved blades, and a safety cover fixing all components.
Designer: Luís Castanheira
