---
title: "3D printed partitions cool air the old-fashioned way"
url: https://www.voxelmatters.com/3d-printed-partitions-cool-air/
date: 2025-07-01
modified: 2025-07-01
lang: en
author: "Tess Boissonneault"
description: "As global temperatures rise and many populations are increasingly subjected to life-threatening heat waves (including across Europe at time of writing), many are looking to futuristic innovations to solve the..."
categories:
  - "Ceramic Additive Manufacturing"
  - "Design"
  - "Furniture"
  - "Sustainability"
image: https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/cooling-partitions-1-640x360.jpeg
word_count: 466
---

# 3D printed partitions cool air the old-fashioned way

As global temperatures rise and many populations are increasingly subjected to life-threatening heat waves (including across Europe at time of writing), many are looking to futuristic innovations to solve the issue and make people more resilient to the extreme weather. Others, however, are looking to the past. Such is the case with a team of researchers and architects based out of Virginia Tech University who have developed 3D printed partitions that can cool air based on the ancient principle of evaporative cooling.

The project, entitled Evaporative Cooling Partitions, explores a passive cooling technology that has existed for thousands of years. The principle behind it is simple enough: hot air passes through a porous clay structure filled with sand and water, which causes the water to absorb the heat and evaporate. While ancient cooling systems were fairly rudimentary in structure, the researchers are leveraging cutting-edge 3D printing technology to update the sustainable cooling technique for modern spaces.

Specifically, the research team has designed a series of stylish elongated partitions that are 3D printed using clay and porcelain material. These clay columns have a hollow interior structure which can be filled with water and sand, and can reportedly reduce air temperatures by over 5.5 °C (10 °F). Notably, the columns are made from a series of interlocking modules, which are unglazed to ensure that air can pass through the walls and water can evaporate through them. The texture and surface design of the modules has been optimized in 3D modeling software to increase the rates of evaporation.

[![3D printed partition evaporative cooling](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/cooling-partitions-2.jpeg)](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/cooling-partitions-2.jpeg)(Photo: Saeed Sakhdard and Ilan Farahi)
"To reduce carbon emissions and simultaneously mitigate dangerous temperatures, new design approaches are sorely needed for the built environment," [reads](https://www.chi-athenaeum.org/green-research-and-technology-2025/2025/03/07/evaporative-cooling-partitions-2024/) a description of the project in for the Green Good Design Award. "The Evaporative Cooling Partitions project (ECP) is an exploration of passive cooling methods believed to have first originated hundreds of years ago in the Middle East and Asia. Building on a niche area of passive neo-archaic building research, this project seeks to explore how this ancient cooling technology might be reintroduced, modernized and integrated in modern building."

The project is still in development, but prototypes made using a [WASP](https://www.voxelmatters.directory/company/wasproject/) 3D printer have shown promise. In tests, a FLIR infrared camera was used to measure air temperature, while a humidity chamber measured evaporation rates. The research team is also interested in exploring the use of other materials, including materials derived by biomineralization.

The research team behind the innovative passive air conditioning project includes Brook Kennedy, a product designer and associate professor in Industrial Design at Virginia Tech, Stefan Al, an architect and affiliate associate professor of architecture at Virginia Tech and Georg Reichard, a professor and department head for Building Construction within the Myers-Lawson School of Construction at Virginia Tech.