Saturday, February 1, 2014

Solar Architecture 

Background



One of the most pressing issues of our times is the unprecedented environmental challenges that have been continually on the rise for the past century. These environmental challenges could eventually manifest itself into a major energy crisis.


Existing buildings account for over 40% of the world’s total primary energy consumption, and 24% of greenhouse gas emissions.¹ In addition, energy received from the sun every year represents approximately 10,000 times as much as our total current annual energy conception ². However, almost none of that is being currently utilized.

There is currently significant hesitance from architects when it comes to addressing solar heating and cooling challenges at higher latitudes. This is due to a lack of confidence and conviction as well as an unhealthy skepticism pertaining to the efficacy of renewable technologies in general and solar energy in particular.



¹Michael Pawlyn, Biomimicry in architecture.

²IEA, Promoting Energy Efficiency Investments – case studies in the residential sector.



Architectural Concern



Architectural responses to environmental issues rely greatly on advances within engineering accompanied by technological innovations, while lacking a comprehensive design approach that would integrate those solutions as an architectural design component. These are rather ad hoc solutions for a specific project, non-generalizable, and mostly not intended to be adapted to other projects, making the design solutions mostly incommensurable.



Position



Current architectural solar solutions are frequently rendered obsolete due to their heavy dependence on present technologies, thus making the learning curve non accumulative. As an alternative, both passive and active solar systems should be regarded as a “design element” similar to more traditional ones, constituting an integral part of any design process due to its necessity. 



Strategies



Form exploration with regards to solar geometry



Efficient solar architecture relies on understating solar geometry at any given location. In order to maximize solar heat gain, solar panels should be positioned perpendicular to incident sun rays, as efficiency can increase or fall off rapidly depending on the angle of incidence. Optimum solar panel orientation can be calculated at any given date, in any given location using a simple Grasshopper definition. Understanding solar geometry will help inform the design process, without which, form finding that aims at optimizing solar gain would be nearly impossible.    



An architectural form exploration that responds to solar geometry and other factors as well



Based on the findings from the first strategy, an architectural form will be studied responding to factors such as use, program, views, accessibility, circulation, and formal expression, all integrated with findings from the first strategy. This aims to prove that environmental factors - solar energy in this case - if considered and analyzed thoroughly at an early stages of design process, will result in architecture that can be energy efficient.

1 comment:

  1. Though it might be a case of too little too late, it is still worthwhile to discuss this matter as you move forward into the rest of the term (if not your final thesis year). The biggest concern is that your thesis position and strategies (as with many other students in the studio) potentially take on quite a dangerous trajectory - that of technological or engineering operations and efficiencies rather than a focus on architectural design.

    As all of you likely are familiar with Giedion's "Mechanization Takes Control", it is worth remembering that one of his critiques was that of how designers' focus on efficiency resulted in many bad things (recall that this book came right after WWII and the Third Reich's Holocaust machine). Giedon draws attention to the problems with an example from cooking by focusing upon the disparity between homestyle slow-cooking versus simply reheating chef-prepared meals. As you can imagine, this source has ramifications on everyone's thesis discussions ranging from Fil and Steven's issues with production and craftsmanship respectively, or LeeAnn and Jason's approaches to components and technologies composing architecture.

    But in your particular case, the desire seems to be effectively doing what already is done on the market. Though design firms try to find the right balance in integration of these solar technologies into their projects, your first strategy seems to focus on optimizations while the second strategy seems to put those considerations architects engage with as less pressing. You have been studying architecture for the past several years, not engineering; execute upon that which you are familiar with. Ask yourself if you are proposing something different from contemporary practice with respect to solar design in architecture. It is hard to believe that current architects embracing solar design neither look at the process as holistically nor look beyond technological solutions. Please outline this as soon as possible as it will help you a great deal moving forward.

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