Tong Shu

Wind Catcher is an experimental project combining wearable design and real-time data sensing. It explores how people in cities can notice, use, and connect with the wind in new ways.

At its core, the project builds a network between people, objects, and data, inviting us to rethink our relationship with natural energy. Instead of relying on centralized wind farms, it suggests a decentralized way of engaging with wind: people wear Wind Catcher Hats—devices that sense wind speed and direction, and upload this data as they move through the city.

This shared wind data not only creates a city-wide wind map, but also powers a set of home objects called Swaying Plants. These respond in real time, gently moving indoors according to the wind conditions recorded elsewhere—bringing the feeling of “distant wind” into everyday life.

The project integrates wireless sensing, circuitry, and IoT technologies—not to maximize control or efficiency, but to support sensory awareness and emotional expression. It doesn’t aim to control the wind, but to invite it—to let wind become a shared, poetic medium that reconnects us with the rhythms of the environment, our bodies, and the natural world.