2018 - Light Liquefaction

Widely regarded as the “opal capital of the world”, Cooper Pedy locates in a desert in northern South Australia. It has 70 opal field and is the largest opal mining area in the world.

Due to the harsh summer desert temperatures and notoriously low humidity, the residents chose to live in underground residences that are called “dugouts” by the locals. Homes, restaurants, and churches were carved out below the ground, and it became a major tourism attraction besides its opal industry.

However, Underground homes helped with the unbearable heat in the summer, but the extreme lack of water and the general lighting for the dogouts still remain problematic.

The intent of this design aims at providing a poetic solution to both the needs for water and lighting in a way that resembles the very nature of what the town is known for: Opal.

Opal’s unique colorful appearance comes from the light dispersion between spheres of silicon dioxide molecules in its crystal structure.

Similarly, we put small glass spheres that are closely packed together on top of the funnel skylight structure that brings daylight into the underground space to serve the purpose of both collecting water and creating light patterns.

Our design imitated the structure of Stenocara’s armor-like bumps into glass spheres to attract water. During the night, the acrylic cover at the top of the tube shall be opened. As morning wind sweeps with relatively high humidity across the desert floor, the water vapor condensates and would be locked between the glass spheres, and eventually forms droplets. This process would be continued before the dawn when the sun rises and begins to heat the tube and cause evaporation.

During the daytime, the acrylic cover will be closed. The light from outside will go through the glass sphere and water thus diffracted into the colorful beams into the underground. The interior diffracted light environment is very similar to opal’s colorful pattern.

At the same time, because of the high temperature outside. The moisture will be evaporated and soon condensates on the acrylic cover and finally channeled to the glass cone in the bottom be ready for the residents’ daily use.