The Green Vanguard: A is for Air Purifier

HUMANSCALE

Two years ago, Humanscale rolled out a prototype for a desktop air purifier that it hoped would open up new markets for the company. The debut proved quite successful: we wrote an extensive article on the product, it appeared in the Museum of Modern Art’s Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition, and it won the obligatory NeoCon award. But like most prototypes, famously finicky and unfinished, the Human-air Personal Zone Air Purifier went back into the shop for more design development.

Introduced this month, the new and improved Humanair has a patented, tightly coiled paper filter with more surface area for collecting dust and particles. “We would have loved to launch it two years ago, but the prototype we had at that point didn’t perform as well as we knew the technology could,” says Tom Revelle, Humanscale’s marketing VP, adding that the company still has high hopes for all-new customers. “While we certainly see opportunities in the contract market, the consumer market is the real target for this product.”