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By Peter Fairley

Solar power got a shot in the arm last year when an off-the-grid housing complex in Santa Monica won a merit award from the AIA Los Angeles chapter. Berlin architect and jury member Matthias Sauerbruch said that Colorado Court, by Pugh + Scarpa, was the first architectural application of photovoltaic (PV) panels that actually looked good. A national architectural jury agreed with him. Colorado Court went on to garner a 2003 AIA Honor Award [RECORD, May 2003, page 135], and soon the design world buzzed with admiration for its five-story-high walls of brilliant blue PV panels.

Ever since its nascent years, solar power has gotten a bad rap. In the 1970s and 1980s, clunky-looking (and often poor-performing) panels were tacked onto buildings as little more than an afterthought. The design-conscious railed against them; manufacturers responded by developing building-integrated PV products, which sought to disguise solar-powered materials in facades or roofs. But projects like Colorado Court and The Solaire, a new high-rise in Manhattan’s Battery Park City, do just the opposite: They embrace, even celebrate, the look of conventional PV technology. In the process, they’re defining a new aesthetic for green buildings—one that’s well-established in Europe but still struggling for life in the U.S.

Gregory Kiss and Nicholas Goldsmith, FAIA, designed structures using PV panels for Under the Sun, an exhibition about solar power mounted at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in 1998. Since that time, solar power’s popularity has increased, thanks to rising demand for green-building techniques. Photography: Courtesy Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum

Gaining ground and making a statement The use of solar power is growing rapidly. PV installations in the U.S. jumped 53 percent in 2002 and rose another 30 to 40 percent last year, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. Not surprisingly, economics is driving demand. States like California are offering tax rebates and other incentives for using solar power. When combined with high energy prices, the payback period for investment in PV can be as little as four years.

PV use seems set to keep growing, with the increasing popularity of building green fostered by the U.S. Green Building Council and their LEED rating system. Solar power is worth one LEED credit toward certification—but perhaps more critically, PVs are among the most observable environmental amenities that can be designed into a building. For architects, making PV technology stand out puts their projects on the map with the public. Rafael Pelli, AIA, partner with New York–based Cesar Pelli and Associates, says this was one reason he highlighted the solar-power system in designing The Solaire’s facade. “We were actively seeking some expression in the building that spoke about its intent,” says Pelli. “The photovoltaics were visible and immediately identifiable as something different.”

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