Global Seminar | Designing with solar materials - From urban scale to modules

The times when solar cells and modules were plain, dark-blue, rigid, and difficult to customize are long gone. Thanks to scientific advancement and the introduction of new materials, the solar – or photovoltaic (PV) – field has experienced, both a technical and creative surge in the last couple of years. Nowadays, a variety of solar modules with unique colours, shapes, and patterns are available. Taking solar design one step further, it is possible to create new compositions by working with a manifold of solar material combinations that make solar modules adaptable, even foldable, and provide them with elegant matte, shiny, or see-through finishes. This enables an entirely new architectural language, where designers can benefit from sheer endless possibilities to create novel energy-activated building facades with high aesthetic quality.

This is the context within which the Chair of Architecture and Building Systems (A/S) at the ETH Zurich organized several BIPV (Building Integrated Photovoltaics) workshops, where participants invented creative prototypes, scaled up their design modules graphically, and applied them to existing building volumes.

In this talk, Maximilian Gester, a researcher at the FCL Global: Powering the Cities module and involved in supervising several design studios, will present results of the aforementioned BIPV workshops, his recent Master thesis on urban integrated PV, and ongoing research within the module. From the urban study, he will present the plethora of feasible structures for PV in Zurich, ranging from small scale bus stops to larger highways, and furthermore demonstrate how each project asks for a diverse architectural language that can be answered from the portfolio of novel solar materials, ultimately transforming structures in the built environment from being mere consumers towards energy-activated prosumers.

Presenter:
Maximilian Gester
Research Assistant at the Chair of Architecture and Building Systems,
ETH Zurich , FCL Global – Powering the city

Future Cities Lab (FCL) Global Seminars
Ideas, discussion and thinking on sustainable cities and settlement systems at the intersection of science, design, place and time.