What clean energy could look like
Don’t appreciate the aesthetics of wind turbines or solar panels? Check out the Land Art Generator Initiative, whose slogan is “Renewable energy can be beautiful.” Their 2010 design competition challenged artists, engineers, and architects to design energy-generating public art installations for one of three sites in the United Arab Emirates. Here’s a sampling of the “aesthetic and pragmatic” submissions. Thanks to LAGI for sharing the images.
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Hybrid Ecology
A boardwalk meanders through a forest of super-scaled artificial plant-like objects, interspersed with sea water greenhouses. The division between real and fake, inside and out is blurred as the artificial flora provide a great deal of natural functions; they are the framework that supports plants started in the greenhouse, some plants act as information screens, other are bird hides, bird nests and feeding stations, and still others are equipped with solar panels that collect energy to provide glowing light throughout the night. The end result is a hybrid ecology that employs intensely artificial means to achieve a natural environment that is both familiar and alien.
FERN (Future / Energy / Renewable / Nature)
A forest of solar "plants" (pun intended) standing ten feet tall is intended to provide an inviting environment for people and animals
Light Sanctuary
Playing with the concept of a mirage - one that produces electricity instead of water - this installation consists of forty kilometers of photovoltaic ribbons raised like a continuous flag or banner that mimics the landscape and invokes the desert's history of fabric and nomadic architecture.
Solar ECO System
The project is an artistic interpretation of the Solar System as well as a metaphor for the United Arab Emirates, represented in the form of a (photovoltaic and LED-covered) Sun with six planets guided by the spiritual sphere (the Crescent) and positioned according to the configuration of the Solar System on the day the U.A.E. was founded.
Sunflower
In an attempt to mimic nature, giant 'flowers' stretch up to the sky with bodies that adapt during the day to directly expose the petals to solar rays. Part of the electricity generated by the petals is given to the grid, while another part is stored in the form of hydrogen inside balloons that will inflate and, when hydrogen is consumed in order to produce electricity, deflate, giving the SUNFLOWER an ever-changing shape, like it was breathing.
Prism Cloud
The Prism Cloud hovers over the desert, alternately casting shadows and spectral light on its surface, calling attention to wind and sun while the canopy harvests solar power.
Wind Stalk
1203 carbon fiber stalks - each 180 feet high - sway in the wind like overgrown marsh grass. The stalks are topped with LED lights that glow and dim depending on how much the poles are moving. The bases are shaped like vortices - no two the same - that collect rainwater in the spaces between, concentrating scarce water to support plant life.