I’m not sure if it's realistic or pessimistic to think that the end of life costs debate is unresolvable from the frame it’s currently approached. As end of life relevant technology and pharmacology spirals in options and costs, there is no foreseeable end to our debate about imposed or allowed limits. Arguments about what constitutes the biological and religious requirements for “life” add more heat than light to the problem.

As usual with wicked problems, we have to change the frame to get anywhere different.

One idea is to require any person or family with stressful cost-implicated end of life decisions to go through the process with coaching in meaningful end of life conversations. These are with each other or if possible with their beloved.

No amount of costs can address people’s incapacity for the kinds of conversations that make letting go more possible and meaningful. No technologies or pharmacologists can replace the power and efficacy of authentic conversations when life ends.

Using a new type of tile that converts the chemicals in pollution into less toxic substances, the Torre de Especialidades is fighting the city’s bad air–and looking good in the process. Plenty of green buildings cut down on pollution with design features that minimize their energy usage. A tower under construction at a Mexico City hospital, on the other hand, actually eats pollution in the air that surrounds it. The Torre de Especialidades is shielded with a facade of Prosolve370e, a new type of tile whose special shape and chemical coating can help neutralize the chemicals that compose smog: and not just a small amount of them, but the equivalent produced by 8,750 cars driving by each day.

The tile is the first product by Berlin-based design firm Elegant Embellishments, whose co-founder Allison Dring explained to me via email, just exactly how a 100-meter-long tile screen can suck up serious amounts of smog.

via 1 | This Beautiful Mexico City Building Eats The City’s Smog | Co.Exist: World changing ideas and innovation

Why couldn’t buildings, as in this case beautiful buildings, be designed not just to not emit pollution or sit neutrally in high urban pollution zones, but actually break down pollutants into useful substances?

It’s ingenious, perhaps suggesting new building policies that incentivize pollution eating design.

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