The average temperature within Abu Dhabi at this time of the year is around 100 degrees. This is why a lot of life in Abu Dhabi, the capital of The United Arab Emirates, revolves around indoor malls with cocoons that are made of cool air. Imagine strolling through an outdoor space under the shade of a canopy, with a cool breeze refreshing your body. When the day becomes night, the light escaping through the canopy’s angular opening gives you the impression of walking beneath the Milky Way.
The canopy concept was created in collaboration with New York architect Sunggi Park. The idea is dubbed Starlit Stratus. It won an art contest sponsored by the Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI). This organization aims to demonstrate to the world that “renewable energy can be beautiful.” Since 2010 LAGI has hosted two contests each year for energy-generating public art. The contests have previously been held in locations like Copenhagen, Santa Monica, and Melbourne.
The contest was held at Masdar City, an area of master-planned development in Abu Dhabi that initially aimed to become one of the first “zero-carbon cities.” Though Masdar City has yet to meet its lofty objectives–it’s mostly empty, the greenhouse gases it emits are dramatically higher than initially planned, and the desert served as a stimulating and demanding backdrop for the contest.
“The local climate presented opportunities for solar energy production and the integration of passive cooling strategies to make a comfortable environment year-round,” write LAGI’s founder director Elizabeth Monoian and Robert Ferry in an email.
Origami Tessellations influenced Park’s entry. It comprises triangular solar panels that generate electricity during the day and fabrics that can be unfolded in the evening. It’s positioned on columns that can be telescoped to adjust the height so that it can capture the sun’s shade as it travels through the skies. The excess energy produced through the solar panels can extract water from the air, store it as drinking fluid, or make a cool mist.
“What impressed the judges about this project is the pragmatic approach to maximizing solar surface area in a manner that radically and dynamically transforms public space,” Say Monoian and Ferry.
Park first began to learn origami as a child. “I loved the fact that a thin paper could turn into any geometry,” Park says. “[The] origami that I learned when I was a kid influenced the LAGI competition.”
If they win, Park and his team will be awarded a cash prize of $40,000.
“I never expected I’d win this competition,” Park declares. “I feel honored and grateful.”
The second prize was a Sun Flower design from Ricardo Solar Lezama, Viktoriya Kovaleva, and Armando Solar from San Jose, California. It’s a massive abstract flower sculpture that has solar panels. The “petals” open in the daytime to capture energy and create shade. When the sun sets, the petals gradually close, and their weight generates more power. The power reflects off the sculpture all night long, transforming it into the size of a giant lantern.
Some other projects are a solar-paneled sundial, a solar-powered labyrinth, and a rainbow-colored canopy to shade the city’s streets with vibrant shade. A project that uses spheres the size of a house coated with Vantablack (a material that reflects 99.96 percent of light) to suck up sunlight. As night falls, the stored solar energy can be used to make the white sphere larger, serving as an event space or space for gatherings. A lot of the designs took inspiration from Emirati culture. One incorporates calligraphy; another plays with the idea that the oasis is desert, while another showcases massive “falcon eggs” made of solar panels. It’s a reference to the bird that is our national.
Monoian and Ferry hope to transform many LAGI’s more than 1,000 entries into real ones. Some are in the process, according to them.
“We hope that LAGI can inspire people and instill a sense of desire and wonder for a new and better world that has drawn down carbon emissions to zero–to see what that world looks like and imagine themselves there,” they add. “After all, that is the world we must create for ourselves by 2050 at the very latest.”