"WHEN FASCISM COMES TO AMERICA IT WILL BE WRAPPED IN THE FLAG
AND CARRYING A CROSS." -SINCLAIR LEWIS

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Solar Lily Pads

This is just a digital rendering, both practical and surreal:

In a stunning example of biomimicry, Scottish architecture firm ZN Architecture have come up with a brilliant scheme to provide solar power to the city of Glasgow - and do so in a way that is provocative, creative, and aesthetically appealing. The proposal? To design Solar Lily Pads which will float in Glasgow’s River Clyde and soak up the sun’s rays, sending electricity to Glasgow’s grid while also stimulating urban riverfront activity.
Based on my travels across Europe and various architectural magazines and websites I've seen it seems that Europeans put a premium on deliberately infusing their urban development with playfulness and imagination, thereby creating beautifully anachronistic cities that juxtapose the shiny, twisted metal and glass of the future with the staid, weathered stone of many centuries past. This dichotomy didn't exist when I was growing up in Texas, where you would be hard pressed to find architecture more than a hundred years old anywhere; I guess that's why I find the duality so fascinating.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Four things I think about this:

1. Why not write codes in such a way that each building is responsible for X% of its own electricity by X year?

2. Why not put the solar panels on the roofs of such building instead of in plain view?

3. I've heard, time and again, that solar panels are one of the least efficient, "green" ways to help the environment. Basically, they're on par with corn-based ethanol.

4. Yes, let's send as much electrical current through water as we possibly can. This can only end well.