Architects see possibilities in light in new energy technology

The Danish Technological Institute is responsible for a major research project which has paved the way for a workshop on solar cells and their aesthetic potential as future architectural building components.
Light, energy and creative architecture with transparent solar cells were the ingredients that made up the challenge which a group of architect students at Aarhus School of Architecture got in the autumn of 2007 as part of the project ‘Light+Energy+Architecture – Solar Cells in Transparent Facades’.

The task for the students was to build an attractive facade for a building. The facade was to be made of transparent solar cells which filter light and which were created using the latest thin-film technology. The students had three weeks to complete the task.

- Our thinking behind the challenge was to focus on the architectural qualities of transparent solar cells as an obvious opportunity to think creatively and design beautiful building facades with solar cells in different colours and patterns, explains project manager Hanne Lauritzen from the centre for Plastics Technology at the Danish Technological Institute, who was one of the arrangers behind the workshop. She adds that it is interesting that by using their imagination the students have shown how solar cells can add new architectonic qualities to a building’s facade.

At the workshop 37 graduate students from the Department of Architectural Design had built room-sized models that were to show how light filters through the transparent solar cells and creates new spatial possibilities and effects. The result of this work culminated in an official exhibition at Aarhus School of Architecture on 23rd November 2007. On the day the different solar cell building facade models were assessed by an invited panel of experts.

- Transparent solar cells possess great architectural potential, says lecturer Ellen Kathrine Hansen from Aarhus School of Architecture, and continues: As well as exploiting the sun’s energy to produce electricity they can be integrated into the facade and used to regulate the interior climate and the amount of daylight coming in.
The challenge is to put all these elements – energy production, temperature regulation and light intake – together into one architectural whole. The interesting thing is to see how the students managed to realise their visions for the sustainable buildings of the future by exploiting light’s potential aesthetically as well as technically.

As well as the Danish Technological Institute and Aarhus School of Architecture, VELFAC A/S and the Danish Building Research Institute are also participants in the research project ‘Light+Energy+Architecture – Solar Cells in Transparent Facades’. Both the workshop and the research project are subsidised by Energinet.dk.