When people exercise at the gym, all the exerted energy is only converted to sweat. And the odds are that the view outside of your gym’s window is mundane.
Some Italian architects are about to change both of these – they are looking at the energy from fitness enthusiasts to power a floating gym… in Paris, France.
It’s a sustainable cycle. The gym, with its exercise machines called ARTIS by Technogym, is being powered by the people inside who use the equipment.
Called the Paris Navigating Gym, it was developed by architects at Carlo Ratti Associati in collaboration with the leading fitness equipment manufacturer Technogym, the non-profit architecture group Terreform ONE and the urban regeneration institute URBEM.
The 20-meter floating gym, which looks like a glass bubble, has ARTIS bikes and cross trainers all over to harvest the power. It is envisioned to float over the Seine River just across the famous Eiffel Tower.
It has augmented reality screens inside that enable its gym goers to see the quantity of energy they produce as they work out, and also data about the Seine’s environmental conditions.
But that gym can only run if there are enough people, at 45 persons maximum, sweating their asses out while appreciating the Paris view.
The inspiration of the design is the Bateaux Mouches ferry boats that are the usual river transport for tourists, dating way back in the early 20th century.
Carlo Ratti, one half of the Carlo Ratti Associati founders, shares in their website, “The Paris Navigating Gym investigates the potential of harnessing human power. It’s fascinating to see how the energy generated by a workout at the gym can actually help to propel a boat. It provides one with a tangible experience of what lies behind the often abstract notion of ‘electric power’.”
Source: Carlo Ratti
