As the planet heats up and our resources stretch to accommodate a skyrocketing population, it has become clear that water will be a hotly contested commodity in the coming years - some are even calling it the “new oil”. Charles Paton has endeavored to meet this challenge with his Seawater Greenhouse which takes a low-cost, low-energy, carbon-neutral approach to desalination. Recently he’s been working with Eden Project and Grimshaw Architects to create a gorgeous sweeping Teatro Del Agua. The design will incorporate Paton’s remarkable desalination method with a publicly accessible venue for the performing arts, once again focusing our societies around the common element that sustains them.

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The Teatro del Agua works by coupling “a series of evaporators and condensers such that the airborne moisture from the evaporators is then collected from the condensers, which are cooled by deep seawater.” The sweeping structure will incorporate solar panels to provide heat for the evaporators and will operate almost entirely on renewable energy.

The Teatro del Agua is planned to be but in Spain’s Canary Islands. We’ve covered culturally focused desalination plants in the past, and we’d love to see more innovative ideas such as these begin to precipitate around the world.