A book presents the state of Swiss solar architecture based on 24 buildings
The publication “Made of Solar” was produced at the Lectureship for Building Technology and Construction BUK and combines artistic photographs of the buildings with detailed axonometric drawings of the constructions.
“Solar was frowned upon for a long time,” says Daniel Mettler, Co-Head of the Lectureship in Building Technology and Construction BUK at ETH Zurich together with Daniel Studer. In 2017, the BUK lectureship began to put the topic on the agenda for the first time with the professorships of Mirsoslav Sik and Arno Schlüter. Subsequently, the professorships of Elli Mosayebi, Roger Boltshauser and Gigon Guyer, among others, explicitly addressed solar in the design studio. “The first semester was a bold experiment,” says Mettler. “Nobody knew how to do solar architecture in an academic context.” A lot has happened since then. SUPSI, ETH Zurich, Swissolar and Swiss Energy have worked together to advance knowledge and jointly set up the external page solarchitecture.ch platform. Solar is being used more frequently in architecture. “Today, solar is almost mainstream,” says Mettler. The book “Made of Solar”, external page published by Birkhäuser, provides an overview of the current state of affairs.
An overview at the beginning of the book explains the constructive system of solar architecture. The 24 examples from Switzerland illustrate the application in architecture. They were artistically photographed by research assistant Yufei He. The pictures show the buildings at night, when the sun is not shining but the windows are illuminated. They are intended to focus on the architecture and the construction, not the solar technology and efficiency, says Yufei He. “And they should point to the architectural potential that can still be discovered in the future with the technology.” Axonometrics depict the constructions in detail, from the substructure to the building method - in some cases on a scale of 1:1. They were drawn with the help of students and are an important part of BUK's teaching. “The drawings explain what is structurally important in a house with solar technology,” says Daniel Studer, co-head of the lectureship.
Five buildings from the book "Made of Solar"
The book aims to explain the whole range of the technology and its construction with just a few examples. There are solar panels in the façade, on roofs or as shutters. A folding roof was even installed over a sewage treatment plant with particularly lightweight plastic PV elements that can be retracted in wind, rain or snow. “We wanted to show that there is good architecture with solar technology,” says Studer. Nevertheless, not all the buildings in the book have the same architectural quality, and many of them are hardly known. Unlike concrete architecture, for which the lectureship external page published a book in 2018, solar architecture does not have a hundred years of design development behind it.
Many of the examples use integrated systems in which the solar elements take on other design functions in addition to energy generation, for example as a building envelope. Today, the technology can be adapted in many ways and the colors of the glass can be selected, which increases the architectural possibilities. At the same time, prices have fallen sharply. According to Daniel Studer, major development steps are still conceivable in terms of design. “One question, for example, is how a solar façade is also possible without a rear-ventilated construction, as this makes the structure expensive.”
Solar technology is developing rapidly, and the future is open. Another question is what architects will do with it and whether solar will become a style-defining element of an entire era. Solar architecture could change the building culture because, for example, the orientation of the sun becomes more important, or the building volume is chosen differently. Or it could become increasingly seamlessly integrated and almost invisible. There are already the first solar glasses that can be used as windowpanes. Although the efficiency is low, the surfaces are all the larger. “Architecture is not getting better or worse because of solar,” says Daniel Studer. Solar technology is a necessity to achieve the energy transition. “We should use it in such a way that it advances architecture.”
