Cool Spot
A system of pavilions, cooling blankets and an app that helps city dwellers beat the heat.
Imagine a world where shade and comfort aren’t luxuries in a city, but civic essentials. Where staying cool on the hottest days is as universal as access to water or light.
That world is fast becoming a necessity. Urban heat is the fastest-growing climate risk, amplifying health crises, deepening inequality, and transforming public life. Streets of concrete and glass trap heat; cars and air conditioning push it higher. Cities are getting hotter, faster, and the most vulnerable feel it first.
The Royal Society of Arts (RSA) challenged us to find solutions, and Cool Spot was my response: a scalable system of pavilions, cooling blankets, and a location-based app that turns overheated streets into visible, accessible sanctuaries. Awarded the RSA Spark Entrepreneurs Award 2025, Cool Spot will receive a seed grant, mentorship, and fellowship to accelerate development. It was recognised for its ability to combine vision with viability: creating a civic system that is practical, human-centred, and future-facing.
Turning urgency into opportunity
The brief from the RSA challenged designers to find immediate, practical responses to the climate crisis. While most urban cooling strategies focus on
long-term infrastructure, research showed that communities need relief now.
The solution was cutting through slow bureaucracy and high-cost interventions to design something modular, human-centred, and ready to scale: an ecosystem of cooling experiences that are fast to deploy and locally adaptable.
Puzzle pieces of a system
The Cool Spot app: A location-based tool that maps the nearest pavilion or partner venue, shows live heat data, and rewards sustainable travel choices. It also provides
anonymised insights to city planners to improve resilience strategies.
Pavilions: Purpose-built cooling shelters, commissioned from architects worldwide, combining airflow, shade, and passive water features. Designed to fit different
cityscapes and cultures, these structures make cooling visible in the public realm.
Wrap Up Cool blankets: Lightweight, portable blankets made with Phase-Change Materials (PCM) that absorb body heat and provide on-the-go comfort - ideal for parks, cafés, or outdoor events.
Together, these elements create a multi-channel system: part product, part service, part civic brand.
To make sure Cool Spot resonated, I tested prototypes with families, elderly residents, small business owners, and urban planners.
Families valued safe spaces for children.
Elderly participants praised the dignity of portable, non-electric cooling.
Business owners saw pavilions and branded blankets as a way to extend outdoor trading in summer.
Planners recognised the power of app data to inform long-term adaptation.
Consistent branding increased trust, especially in stressful heatwave conditions.
Cool Spot is designed for practical rollout:
Pavilions can be locally fabricated with timber, recycled composites, and sustainable water systems.
Blankets leverage existing supply chains used for healthcare and outdoor equipment.
The app uses open-source mapping APIs and integrates city-level climate data.
Cities can pilot with just one pavilion and the app, scaling the system as demand and data grow. This hybrid model ensures that Cool Spot isn’t just a one-off installation, but a replicable, sustainable toolkit for urban cooling.
Extreme heat already causes nearly 489,000 deaths worldwide every year (WHO, 2024). It is the fastest growing climate risk, amplifying health crises, and deepening inequality.
Streets of concrete and glass trap heat, while cars and air conditioning push it higher. Urban areas can be up to 6 °C (10 °F) hotter than surrounding rural areas (NASA, 2024). While everyone is affected, children and the elderly are hit hardest (Health Journalism, 2024). Many do not even know where to find cooler areas nearby, making protection harder when it is needed most (AMS, 2024).
Cool Spot proves that design can move beyond visualising climate solutions to making them more liveable, transforming cooling from a technical fix into a civic right.
