Not a speaker or a purifier – cleansing the air through sound and music with Vox Aeris

A new way to clean air – London-based designer Selene Sarı crafts air-purifier Vox Aeris that is additionally designed to work as a speaker. Intrigued? 

We breathe about 22,000 times a day and yet we rarely know what’s in the air that we breathe. Today, we spend 90% of our time indoors, which can be five times more polluted than outdoor environments. Did you know that?

Everyone deserves cleaner air but there’s a lack of awareness in regards to air purification and how it impacts one’s health – “this is because even if our surroundings are filled with unsafe levels of particulate matter, they are completely invisible. Their most dangerous effects ranging from Alzheimer’s to Cancer typically show themselves in the long term, not immediately!” explains Sarı.

Vox Aeris steps in here and its harmonious dual-purpose is the result of three modes of operation – an innovative cleaning, listening and Vox mode which not only plays music but further cleans the air.

This eclectic but one-of-a-kind product purifies the air through a scientific process named agglomeration, a method where particles group together “much like how snowballs form“. The agglomeration process is formed via turbulence that is produced by a vortex created by the device’s internal fans and also by acoustics – created by low-frequency sounds from its speaker.

These methods then push air particles into a recyclable laser-engraved filter, which then filters the air.

Dials on this product effortlessly embody a mix of speaker and purifier functions – a screen on the top left displays the current environment’s air quality level while the dials on the bottom control features the sound’s tone and volume level.

Vox Aeris can be plugged into the wall but it also has an internal battery that could be utilized as a portable speaker for outdoor use.

Sarı believes that through the design’s dual use – there is an opportunity to address a much larger audience and give more people a chance to breathe cleaner air.

“Cleaning our air should not be a luxury or a neglected chore, it should be something that’s seamlessly integrated into our lives and gives us control over the most frequent activity we do every single day – breathing. My aim is to change the perception we have about indoor air quality – this device cleanses the air through sound and music!” she adds. 

Current air purifying solutions have an unappealing medical device outlook, tend to be costly as they have filters that are expensive to charge and are non-recyclable.

However “in comparison Vox Aeris was fabricated to be affordable as well as engaging and approachable – it offers an alternative by using low-cost and recyclable fabric filters!” concludes Sarı.