It’s no longer disco time but inflatable time for Toulouse’s shade houses. This is also a world first. Saturday and Sunday, with heat of up to 30 degrees forecast, Toulouse town hall will test for the first time an inflatable shade demonstrator integrated into the urban space, developed by Michelin.
It will be installed at Place Abbal in the Reynerie district and will be able to offer up to 260 m2 of shade in this open space. This innovative system, which is deployed very simply according to needs, is suitable for providing shade and coolness to mineral squares, open spaces and esplanades.
Temperatures felt to be falling
This experiment is part of the “Toulouse + fresh” action, a plan to cool the city. In this context, actions have been carried out, such as the greening of school facades or public buildings, improvements in albedo by notably modifying the color of the soil, the installation of shade sheds in each of the neighborhoods of the city with very encouraging first results. Temperature measurements carried out this summer showed, among other things, a felt temperature reduced by 4.8°C under the shade of the Carré de la Maourine and by 5.6°C on the Borderouge playground on the days of full sun.
The cooling provided by the inflatable shade will also be evaluated using monitoring solutions tailor-made by the Toulouse company Wiifor to support the experiments of the “Toulouse + fresh” plan.