Dive Brief:

• The 25-story NBF Osaki Building in Tokyo can reduce its surface temperature by as much as 22 degrees Fahrenheit and the surrounding air temperature by 3.6 degrees with a system called BioSkin designed by the building's architects.
• BioSkin is an evaporative-cooling device that recycles purified rainwater through porous ceramic pipes on the surface of the structure.
• Nikken Sekkei architects drew on a Japanese water-sprinkling tradition called Uchimizu and bamboo blinds called sudare.

Dive Insight:

The idea of the blinds shows up in solar panels that act as shades on the south side of the building. The overall goal was to reduce the building's contribution to Tokyo's urban heat island effect.