SOLARSHADES

SOLARSHADES by Julian Paula & Paul Canfora

‘Solar­shades’ is an indoor solar pow­er plant, which can be retro­fit­ted or new­ly installed in every space. It enables every­one to gen­er­ate renew­able elec­tric­i­ty in their home or work­ing envi­ron­ment.

Where The sys­tem is mount­ed in front of win­dows or used as space dividers. It can be new­ly installed and retro­fit­ted in big build­ings or in everyone’s home.

Who ‘Solar­shades’ are intend­ed to pro­duce ener­gy for every­one, every­where, be it in offices, uni­ver­si­ties, air­ports or res­i­den­tial build­ings. It is par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult to install, for exam­ple, pho­to­voltaics as a means of ener­gy gen­er­a­tion in res­i­den­tial build­ings, as one must obtain per­mis­sion from all res­i­dents and the land­lord. This is why ‘Solar­shades’ was cre­at­ed as it allows every­one to direct­ly pro­duce their own ener­gy  in their own liv­ing space.

Why We want­ed to improve the indi­vid­ual work/life sit­u­a­tion and impact the cityscape in a non-obstruc­tive way. Bulky pho­to­volta­ic pan­els are not aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing and they do not blend in with the his­tor­i­cal facades in a city. Due to the flex­i­bil­i­ty in shape, ‘Solar­shades’ are able to achieve a pos­i­tive influ­ence on a cityscape. Fur­ther­more, when mov­ing the ele­ments in a room, the light irri­ta­tion changes, and abstract shad­ow plays enter it. In this way, the pan­els not only serve as sus­tain­able ener­gy source, but also offer sun pro­tec­tion and pro­vide pri­va­cy.

How The project uses a solar tech­nol­o­gy where the indi­vid­ual solar cells pro­duc­tion requires a small amount of ener­gy – organ­ic pho­to­volta­ic (OPV). By col­lab­o­rat­ing with the world’s lead­ing OPV man­u­fac­tur­er ASCA, the project shows how to inte­grate these pan­els into a func­tion­al and dec­o­ra­tive blind, there­by shift­ing the aes­thet­ics from bulky PV pan­els to a thin, light and col­or­ful way of pro­duc­ing sus­tain­able ener­gy.

2000 1250 Angewandte Milano
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