The brick simply lets water evaporate, pulling heat with it
Dois estudantes de design suíços trouxeram à tona um conhecimento milenar — o resfriamento evaporativo das torres de vento persas e dos jarros de barro — e o reencarnaram em um tijolo modular chamado Bloc, capaz de reduzir a temperatura do ar em até 9°C sem consumir energia elétrica. Em cidades como São Paulo e Fortaleza, onde o calor urbano já é uma questão de saúde pública, essa convergência entre sabedoria ancestral e fabricação digital aponta para uma arquitetura que aprende com a natureza em vez de combatê-la. O que está em jogo não é apenas conforto térmico, mas a possibilidade de tornar as cidades habitáveis para todos — não apenas para quem pode pagar pelo ar-condicionado.
- As ondas de calor urbano se intensificam com as mudanças climáticas, e o ar-condicionado convencional agrava o problema ao despejar calor residual de volta para as ruas.
- O Bloc, desenvolvido como projeto de tese em Zurique, resfria o ar em até 9°C por evaporação através de terracota porosa, sem compressores nem conexão à rede elétrica.
- Seu design modular permite instalação em fachadas, pontos de ônibus e praças, tornando o conforto térmico algo escalável e acessível ao espaço público.
- Finalista do James Dyson Award 2025, o projeto ainda está em fase de protótipo e precisa ser testado em climas úmidos como os das grandes cidades brasileiras.
- A corrida por soluções passivas de resfriamento — tijolos de cânhamo, fachadas vegetadas, revestimentos refletivos — sinaliza que a arquitetura está redescubrindo respostas que a história já havia dado.
Dois estudantes de design industrial da Escola de Artes e Design de Zurique construíram um tijolo que resfria o ar ao redor em até nove graus Celsius sem nenhuma ligação à rede elétrica. Andrin Stocker e Luc Schweizer chamaram o projeto de Bloc, e o princípio por trás dele é tão antigo quanto os jarros de barro usados no deserto: quando a água evapora através de um material poroso, ela carrega calor consigo. O que os estudantes fizeram foi escalar essa lógica para a cidade.
O Bloc é fabricado por impressão 3D em terracota e perfurado por minúsculos canais internos. Uma pequena bomba movida a energia solar faz a água circular por esses canais; à medida que ela evapora, a temperatura do ar ao redor cai. Nos testes iniciais, o efeito foi mais pronunciado sob sol direto — exatamente onde o asfalto e o concreto transformam ruas em fornos. O projeto foi reconhecido como finalista do James Dyson Award 2025.
A originalidade do Bloc não está na física, mas na pergunta que os estudantes fizeram: e se pegássemos o que as torres de vento persas e os vasos de cerâmica já sabiam e reconstruíssemos isso para um quarteirão moderno? O design modular permite instalar um único tijolo em uma parada de ônibus ou cobrir uma fachada inteira, e um estudo publicado na revista Atmosphere em 2024 confirmou que o resfriamento evaporativo passivo está entre as estratégias mais promissoras contra as ilhas de calor urbano.
No Brasil, onde São Paulo, Rio e Fortaleza registram temperaturas muito acima das regiões ao redor, a tecnologia chega num momento crítico. Ao contrário do ar-condicionado — que consome energia e devolve calor para a rua —, o Bloc trabalha com o ambiente. O próximo passo é testá-lo em condições reais, especialmente em climas úmidos onde o resfriamento evaporativo tradicionalmente enfrenta limitações. A pergunta que fica é se as cidades vão adotar essas soluções antes que o calor se torne insuportável.
Two Swiss design students have built something that feels like magic but works through physics so old it predates electricity. Walk past a sun-baked wall on a summer afternoon and the air around it drops nine degrees. No compressor hums. No power cord runs to the grid. The brick, called Bloc, simply lets water evaporate through its porous terracotta body, and as the moisture rises into the air, it pulls heat with it—the same principle that keeps a clay water jug cool in the desert, scaled up and retrofitted for the concrete cities where millions of people now live.
Andrin Stocker and Luc Schweizer, industrial design students at Zurich's School of Arts and Design, developed Bloc as their thesis project. The brick is modular, manufactured using 3D printing, and riddled with tiny channels. Water circulates through these channels via a small pump powered by a solar panel mounted on the brick's surface. As that water evaporates, the surrounding air temperature drops. In initial tests, the cooling effect reached nine degrees Celsius in the air stream exiting the brick, particularly in direct sunlight where asphalt and concrete normally turn streets into ovens. The work earned recognition as a finalist in the 2025 James Dyson Award, one of the world's most prestigious design competitions.
What makes Bloc remarkable is not that it works, but that the students didn't invent the principle. They studied it. Persian wind towers called badgirs have been cooling buildings for centuries by capturing and channeling air through architectural passages. Traditional terracotta vessels kept water drinkable long before refrigeration existed. The students simply asked: what if we took that ancient knowledge and rebuilt it for a city block? The result is biomimicry in its truest form—not fighting nature but learning from it, then applying that lesson to the problem of urban heat.
The modular design matters. Each brick stores water internally, which means it doesn't rely solely on surface capillarity the way simpler evaporative systems do. This makes it scalable. You can install a single Bloc on a bus shelter or cover an entire building facade with them. The system works even in humid climates like Central Europe, where traditional passive cooling struggles. A 2024 study published in the journal Atmosphere examined ceramic bricks with humidity control and confirmed that passive evaporative cooling is among the most promising strategies for fighting urban heat islands—the phenomenon where cities become significantly hotter than surrounding rural areas because concrete and asphalt absorb and radiate heat far more efficiently than grass or trees.
In Brazil, this matters acutely. São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Fortaleza all experience temperatures substantially higher than their surrounding regions, a direct result of urban density and the materials cities are built from. Heat waves are intensifying with climate change, and they kill. Unlike air conditioning, which consumes enormous amounts of electricity and dumps waste heat back into the street, Bloc works with the environment rather than against it. The system is modular enough to be installed gradually—in plazas, on pedestrian streets, at transit stops—making thermal comfort something that could eventually reach everyone, not just those who can afford to stay indoors.
The technology is still in prototype phase. The next steps involve real-world testing in actual urban environments, with particular attention to performance in humid climates where evaporative cooling traditionally struggles. Researchers worldwide are pursuing similar paths: hemp bricks, vegetated facades, high-reflectance coatings. The direction is clear. Architecture is beginning to understand that many solutions to modern problems already exist in the practices of earlier generations. They simply need fresh eyes, some creativity, and perhaps a 3D printer. The question now is whether cities will adopt them before the heat becomes unbearable.
Citas Notables
The project combines traditional knowledge, natural systems, and urban objects to improve city habitability during extreme heat episodes— Bloc creators Stocker and Schweizer
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why does a brick made of clay and water sound like it could actually work where air conditioning fails?
Because it's not fighting the heat—it's using the heat to drive the cooling. When water evaporates, it absorbs thermal energy from the air around it. That's not new physics. What's new is putting it on a building facade where millions of people walk past every day.
But doesn't humidity make evaporative cooling useless? I thought that was the whole problem with swamp coolers in wet climates.
Traditional evaporative coolers do struggle in humidity. But Bloc stores water internally in the brick itself, so it's not dependent on pulling moisture from the air. The solar pump keeps water circulating through the porous channels. Even in Central Europe, where the air is already damp, the system works.
So these are just two students who looked at old Persian towers and thought, why not 3D print that?
Essentially, yes. But that's the insight. They didn't try to invent something new. They studied what worked for centuries, understood the principle, and asked how to make it modular and scalable for a modern city. That's harder than it sounds.
A nine-degree drop seems almost too good to be true. Is that the actual air temperature, or just the surface of the brick?
It's the temperature of the air exiting the brick's cooling zone. In direct sunlight, where the effect is strongest. In shade or on cooler days, the drop would be smaller. But in cities like São Paulo or Rio, where summer temperatures regularly exceed 35 degrees Celsius, even a five or six-degree reduction changes whether a bus stop is survivable.
What stops someone from just installing these everywhere tomorrow?
Cost, durability testing, and the need to prove it works at scale in real cities. Right now it's a prototype. They need to test it through seasons, in different humidity levels, see how the terracotta holds up. Then there's the question of whether cities will actually invest in something that doesn't generate profit or require ongoing service contracts.
But if it works, and it's modular, couldn't a city just start small? A few bus stops, a plaza?
That's the hope. The design allows for exactly that kind of gradual deployment. You don't need to retrofit an entire neighborhood at once. You can test it, learn from it, expand it. That's actually what makes it different from most climate solutions—it's not all-or-nothing.