What sounded like a long shot attempt to literally suck some of the suffocating smog out of China’s sky is actually working, according to updates on the Smog Free Project, which installed an air-vacuuming tower in a Beijing square. Created by Studio Roosegaarde, the tower has been up for over 40 days with China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection keeping track of the results. This week, they announced that the air around the tower is 55 percent cleaner than before after scrubbing 30 million cubic meters of air – equal to the volume of 10 Beijing National Stadiums.

The Smog Free Tower made its debut during Beijing Design Week 2016, with Studio Roosegaarde announcing plans to compress collected smog particles into ‘smog free’ jewelry as a tangible souvenir of the project. Standing 23 feet (7 meters) tall, the tower is the world’s largest air purifier, capable of capturing and collecting more than 75% of the pm2.5 and pm10 airborne smog particles and emitting a circular zone of clean air.

Six vents on each side of the super-sized purifier suck in air at a volume of 30,000 cubic meters per hour, about the size of 100 swimming pools, through a patented ionization technique that captures tiny particles without creating ozone in the process. The first tests in Rotterdam earlier this year showed that the filter cleaned surrounding air by 75 percent. Smog is much less of a problem there than it is in Beijing, so it’s no surprise that the machine didn’t do quite as well in China.

Daan Roosegaarde sees his creation as the beginning of a war on smog, indicating that larger towers are planned in the future and will be expanded to additional cities. One potential limitation may be that the filters are reportedly so expensive, the firm won’t reveal their cost – but all technology has to start somewhere, so maybe there’s a solution for that somewhere down the line.

Successfully crowdfunded last year, the Smog Free Tower has just gone from concept to reality; deployd for testing around Rotterdam, these machines are now using green energy to create zones of smog-free space around the city.

Daan Roosegaarde’s Smog Free Project may not be a complete solution to urban air pollution, but it can at least carve out breathable areas in key civic spaces like downtown squares and public parks.

Each 20-foot tower is lightweight and elegantly designed, running on about the same amount of electricity used by a water boiler (1,400 watts). Low-energy technology efficiently powers both the ionization process and on-board LEDs that light the structures up at night.

The device sucks smog in from above then using a small positive current to charge ions, which in turn attach to fine dust particles.

The particulates processed by the tower are to be compressed and turned into jewelry including rings and cuff links, or packed into transparent cubes, available to crowdfunding backers and others who wish to support the project as it continues to expand and grow.

New towers are planned for cities in particularly urgent need around the world, including Beijing, Paris, Mexico City and Los Angeles. As a solution to environmental issues in cities, this may only be a first step, but at least it can provide some relief – a breath of fresh air for smog-weary citizens.

Featuring 100,000 square feet of smog-filtering surface area, this structural facade will break down harmful oxides in sunlight to improve air quality all around it.

The building, designed by Italian firm Nemesi & Partners, is being created for an exposition in Milan themed around planet-friendly sustainable designs.

The amorphous and organic form is both a reference to trees and other types of air-purifying plants but also a way to provide a maximum amount of exposed surface.

Like a forest, this facade will cast complex shadows and provide shade in and around the building. Its form references both nature and man-made land art.

Rooftop solar panels tucked out of view will add a further but less-visible green dimension, generating electricity for the building below.

It sounds so preposterous and yet is sufficiently plausible that its designer is now talking to the mayor of Beijing about how to develop for urban use in this notoriously congested capital of China.

Daan Roosegaarde developed a system using buried coils of copper to create an ion electrostatic field that attracts smog particles, effectively magnetizing them and pulling them down. The result is sizable void of clean air above.

While it cannot yet work on a city-wide basis, the idea is to begin by clearing hundreds of feet of air in key public spaces like parks, squares and other paths trafficked by pedestrians.

They have already prototyped a device that can suck a square meter of polluted air from a larger interior space, effectively punching a hole in a simulated cloud of smog and collecting the resulting particles safely below.

The designer puts the problem and project in context: “We have created machines to enhance ourselves. We invented the wheel and cars to liberate ourselves and travel. But now these machines are striking back, making air polluted in high-density cities like Beijing.”

Their “young design firm based in the Netherlands and Shanghai, [which] has been working on intricate designs like a sustainable dance floor which generates electricity when you dance, and smart highways which produce their own light. Now [Daan Roosegaarde] and his team of engineers are creating a technology to clean the air of Asian cities.”