RSS
Home
Green Building Innovations - Transforming our cities
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
Integrated Concentrating Solar Facade
In a time when we are still building in an outdated fashion and with antiquated materials, I find solace in meeting people such as Anna Dyson, associate professor at RPI and director of CASE, Center of Architecture Science and Ecology I had the opportunity to briefly meet her prior to her lecture with San Francisco architect, Richard Pollack of Pollack Archietcts.
We had the opportunity to discuss the many emerging technologies being researched and developed at CASE, such as the cutting edge Integrated Concentrating (IC) Solar Facade System. It is using solar energy, as not only a source to capture energy but also as a source to transform it. This system would be applied to existing or new buildings and serve as a curtain wall with small glass lenses embedded with tiny photovoltaic panels. The system has the capacity to redirect light and heat through a geometric Fresnel Lens, the lens would shift according to the array of the sun, for optimum solar gain. The curtain wall serves as a way to diffuse daylight into the building and drastically reducing energy loads, while giving the interior an architectural nod.
As we know, traditional PV panels are quite inefficient and hardly attractive - yet this design takes the technology to the next level, in aesthetic and function. The IC Solar Facade makes next generation PV panels a practical way of stacking functions and the capacity fitting most existing windows.
In the core of green building ethics, lies the basic principal of renovating over building new - all the technologies emerging from CASE are sensitive to this and take into consideration the ability to be flexible and malleable.
With the technology we have at our fingertips, it is critical that we continue on a grassroots level, to create a social understanding for our immediate need to integrate these technologies into our buildings and not allow the bureaucracy of our country to hold back our innovation. We are left to push forward with our ingenuity and our passion to make us the leaders in this new revolution!
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
