Solar Architecture
Background
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.
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.
ReplyDeleteAs 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.