The Solar House: 2013 Year in Review

As the sun sets on 2013, I thought it would be fun to review some of the solar house-related news that caught my eye this year.  This a bit broader than solar house history, to include topics from the green building movement and the solar industry, because I figure anyone who visits will be interested.

A Big Year for PV

It was a "record-shattering year" for the U.S. solar industry.  A system was installed every 4 minutes, including a small array on the White House.

The Top 4 Trends in Residential Solar, according to GreenTech Media, were:
1. Third-party ownership
2. Reducing soft costs
3. Participation by Utilities
4. Vertical integration and consolidation

And at the utility-scale, the 280MW Solana solar farm in Arizona came online in October.  It's the first U.S. solar plant with thermal energy storage.  Also, solar beat coal in new electrical generation capacity during first nine months of 2013.

Lost: The George Löf house

George Löf house, 1956-2013. Photo © Anthony Denzer.

Denver's George Löf house was one of the most important remaining monuments in solar house history, built in 1956 and continuously operating since.  It included flat-plate collectors (air heaters) on the roof and gravel storage tubes.  Sometime in early 2013 it was demolished.  I discovered this and reported it in June.  The news was reprinted by ASES at their website (link) and in Solar Today (link p.53), and then published again in modified form by GreenBuildingAdvisor.com (link).

Trending in 2013

Gender Issues: In both the architecture world and the solar industry, issues of gender came to the fore in 2013.  In architecture, the Denise Scott Brown/Pritzker Prize controversy started a great deal of dialogue, but didn't bring Brown a prize.  Then, long-since-deceased Julia Morgan did get a prize, causing more controversy (and I jumped into the discussion here). 

In the solar industry, one blogger discussed Why solar needs more women.  A first-ever survey confirmed "women are crucial to the solar market."  And Women in Solar Energy wrote An Open Letter to industry groups asking them to "stop the booth babe culture" and "support a culture of professionalism" at conferences and expos.

Resilience:
The importance of resilience to architecture and civil engineering came into the mainstream of the discourse this past year.  The Rocky Mountain Institute included resilience in their 5 ways buildings have reached a 'GREEN' tipping point.  The Rockefeller Foundation published a nice summary of resilience in September.  And in 7 Home Performance Trends to Watch in 2014, Mike Rogers defines resilience as "passive survivability."  And resilience is a major point in the AIA's new report Sustainability Leadership Opportunity Scan mentioned below.

The Big Event: Solar Decathlon

About 64,000 people visited the 2013 Solar Decathlon in Irvine, California.  Team Austria won.  All of the houses produced more energy than they consumed.  Great work, students!

For a Rizzoli newsletter, I wrote: If you're curious about the future of solar architecture, head to the Orange County Great Park in Irvine, California, this October and visit the 2013 Solar Decathlon.  Twenty new experimental solar houses built by students will rapidly materialize for public tours and within weeks they will be demounted and sent home.  It will be quite a spectacle. In The Solar House: Pioneering Sustainable Design, I discuss the Solar Decathlon's legacy in the context of the longer history of architectural experimentation with solar heating which dates back to the 1930s.... In the book I discuss many reasons to watch the event with a critical eye, but what will surely shine through will be the enthusiasm of the students and their fascinating solutions for an age-old theme: the solar house.

Team Austria house. Credit: Stefano Paltera/U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon

I also liked Guy Horton's take at ArchDaily: Why the Solar Decathlon Should Enter the Real World.

Every time I write about the Solar Decathlon, I must mention that there is even better work being done in local communities by student groups in programs such as: the University of Virginia's ecoMOD program, which won Architect Magazine’s 2013 Research and Development Award; the University of Kansas' Studio 804 (I am an alumni), which had one of the best new buildings of 2013; and Design Build Bluff, a consortium led by the University of Utah.  These programs are all 'descendants' of the Rural Studio (founded by Samuel Mockbee).

New Books

First, I might modestly mention the one to the right.  (The best third-party summary so far is by John Hill at Houzz.)  Thanks to everyone who bought the book, reviewed it, or blogged about it.  And please continue spreading the word!

I continue to enjoy John Perlin's Let It Shine: The 6,000-Year Story of Solar Energy as I work my way through it.  I wrote a quick reaction and offered some context for the German-modern section here, and hope to write further about the book soon.  You'll find some articles by Perlin are here and here.

And The Greenest Home: Superinsulated and Passive House Design by Julie Torres Moskovitz is an excellent compendium of recent examples.  It opened my eyes to plenty of firms I didn't know about before, and that caused me to reflect on the breadth of creativity (and competence) in the green building movement.  It's also a beautifully-designed book.

New Green Buildings

The Bullitt Center by The Miller Hull Partnership
from http://www.bustler.net/index.php/article/seattles_super_green_bullitt_center_opened_on_earth_day/

I'm especially impressed with the Bullitt Center (website), which opened in April.  This building, it seems to me, could be a game-changer in terms of creating a new aesthetic which is expressive of the features that save and produce energy.  It also signifies a new interest in timber construction which seems to have been a theme of 2013.  A minor grievance from the link: it's disingenuous to say you're saving energy by using remote servers rather than local ones.  That's like eating in restaurants and then bragging about saving money on groceries.

The AIA Committee on the Environment (COTE) released its 2013 Top Ten.  The San Francisco PUC building is pretty fantastic.

A Worthy Cause

There's a Kickstarter campaign to digitize the Solar and Renewable Energy Archives of the American Solar Energy Society.  This includes more than 50 years of Solar Conference proceedings and magazines and newsletters.  I think it would open a lot of eyes to know how vigorous the solar house movement was in the mid-50s, as you could see by browsing The Sun at Work, for example.

New Reports

The AIA released the Sustainability Leadership Opportunity Scan in October.  It's serious and significant.  It identifies "Four Priority Issues Where Architects Can Lead": energy; materials; design & health; and resilience.

The Urban Green Council's report, Seduced by the View, says "All-glass facades are a long-term problem."  (My book gives some historical perspective on this issue.)

In Historic Preservation, the Preservation Green Lab issued a major new report, Learning from Los Angeles, which analyzed demolition and development trends.

Overdue Recognition

Bateson Building, by Sim van der Ryn and Peter Calthorpe (Sacramento, 1975-78)
from http://www.aiacc.org/2013/07/16/sacramentos-bateson-building-and-lincoln-plaza/

In July, at the AIA California Council, Etienne Louw wrote a terrific piece about "seminal works in our midst," Sacramento’s Bateson Building and Lincoln Plaza.  These are pioneering green buildings of the 1970s.  In my estimation, The Bateson Building, by Sim van der Ryn and Peter Calthorpe, will surely earn a place in the history books of the future.  (Tip o' the cap to Dell Upton for being ahead of the curve in this regard.)  I was less familiar with Lincoln Plaza, but now am very happy to know more about it.

New Professionalism

A major theme in the history and current practice of Green Building is the idea of 'integrated practice', or teamwork.  Simply put, in order to make better buildings, architects and engineers need to collaborate differently.  (Again, my book gives some historical perspective on this issue.)

The journal Building Research & Information  published a special issue on "New Professionalism" (available free).  In it, Bill Bordass & Adrian Leaman propose 10 Elements of a New Professionalism:
1. Be a steward of the community, its resources and the planet. Take a broad view.
2. Do the right thing, beyond your obligation to whoever pays your fee.
3. Develop trusting relationships, with open and honest collaboration.
4. Bridge between design, project implementation and use. Concentrate on the outcomes.
5. Do not walk away. Provide follow-through and aftercare.
6. Evaluate and reflect upon the performance in use of your work. Feed back the findings.
7. Learn from your actions and admit your mistakes. Share your understanding openly.
8. Bring together practice, industry, education, research and policy-making.
9. Challenge assumptions and standards. Be honest about what you do not know.
10. Understand contexts and constraints. Create lasting value. Keep options open for the future.

WWWinning

As usual, Martin Holladay wins the internet this year with his super-informative blog Musings of an Energy Nerd.
My favorite entries:
Passivhaus Buildings Don’t Heat Themselves
All About Thermal Mass
How Much Fresh Air Does Your Home Need?
And one of a historical nature: Can Solar Power Solve the Coal Problem?

WWWeird trend

Historical figures tweeting in first person.

New Tools

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) shared their in-house Environmental Analysis Tool™, free to all.  It may be the best tool available for calculating embodied carbon.

BuildingGreen's Top-10 Products for 2013 included WUFI software, a tool which models moisture and heat flows in wall assemblies.

Ladybug, a plugin for Grasshopper, does environmental analysis.  It's free.

NREL released a new version of PVWatts.  It allows consumers to estimate the energy production and costs of PV systems.  IMBY will be sunsetted.

NREL's JEDI, which stands for Jobs and Economic Development Impact and estimates the economic impacts of Renewable Energy projects, was discussed at SOLAR 2013.

Finally...

...another example showing why history matters.  LEED v.4 came on-line in 2013.  The most common version, LEED-NC (for New Construction), doesn't include any new rewards for either passive or active solar as far as I can tell.  But the previous version was already pretty effective at rewarding energy use reduction and green power.  LEED-ND (for Neighborhood Development), however, includes a worthy new provision.  A Solar Orientation credit can be earned for orienting buildings with their long axis east-west, or enabling that in the master plan.  This is best, of course, for passive solar heating, shading, and daylighting control.  As a historian I must note that America's first professional architect, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, suggested this very same practice---that city blocks should be shallow and wide, extended east-west, for houses to face south---in 1784!

Colonia Elioterapica

Did you know Mussolini built 'Heliotherapy Colonies' for Italian children?

If I had been afforded more space in the book I would have included more discussion of the sun-responsive (or heliotherapeutic) architecture of the 1920s and 30s, especially in Europe.  I regard heliotherapeutic architecture, often directly responsive to tuberculosis, as categorically distinct from the solar-heated architecture that is the focus of The Solar House, although certainly there are parallels and affinities.  Here's another fascinating episode in the story of heliotherapeutic architecture.

In Italy, the colonia elioterapica (heliotherapy colony) gave fresh air and sunshine to children from industrial areas.  This type of facility, essentially a summer day camp, is unique to Mussolini’s Italy and provided fascist education along with medical care.  In general, the buildings would “act like great beach umbrellas, sheltering the children during sudden showers or at meals, and for controlling the hours of exposure to the sun.”

Colonia Elioterapica by BBPR (Legnano, Italy, 1937-39). From http://www.urbipedia.org/index.php?title=Archivo:BBPR.ColoniaHelioterapica.1.jpg

BBPR designed the finest colonia elioterapica, in Legnano (1937-39), which was widely published.  Architect Lodovico Belgioioso of BBPR later described the program: “There was a lot of gymnastics, then after lunch they would have a rest.  There was a wooden roof-terrace which we built for this purpose because it was more healthy, avoiding the damp from the ground.  Then there was singing and medical check-ups, which were seen as very important, to ensure that there were no infectious diseases amongst the children.”

Colonia Elioterapica "Roberto Farinacci" by Carlo Gaudenzi (Cremona, Italy, 1936)
from http://www.flickr.com/photos/ennsor/3947451548

Several others (plural: colonie elioterapiche) were built, including one in Cremona pictured above.  Another, by Enrico Del Debbio, was constructed at the Foro Mussolini in Rome in 1933-35.  Others were built in Benevento, Boffalora-sull-Adda, Cantu, Palazzolo sull’Oglio, S. Lazzarro di Savena, Varese, and Vercelli.

Sources
Stefano de Martion and Alex Wall, eds., Cities of Childhood: Italian Colonie of the 1930s (1988).
Borden W. Painter, Mussolini’s Rome: Rebuilding the Eternal City (2005).
Dan Dubowitz, Patrick Duerden and Penny Lewis, Fascismo Abbandonato (2010). (link)

Also
Historic film in Italian

Some thoughts on the Julia Morgan AIA Gold Medal

My first quick reaction on hearing that Julia Morgan (1872-1957) was awarded the AIA Gold Medal yesterday? Terrific! It will bring some well-deserved recognition to a very important and very accomplished architect who is generally forgotten.

In fact, I've 'forgotten' her myself, unfortunately, in my teaching. When I used to have an entire semester to cover the 20th century, she merited a full lecture. Currently (because of the constrained curriculum of an engineering program) I must cover the entire history of architecture in a semester and she's been crowded out, along with a multitude of other small tragedies.

Asilomar Conference Center, Julia Morgan, 1913
http://www.flickr.com/photos/whsieh78/10701138794/

Having lived in Berkeley and Pasadena, I knew her work and her importance pretty well. Her Hearst Gymnasium and Hearst Mining Building were (and are) two of the jewels of the campus at Berkeley. I remember studying the Mining Building and finding it exceptionally well-composed as a teenager, long before my architectural education. I also remember hanging out at a Julia Morgan house on Derby Street in Berkeley, a student-rental at that time, and I recall that everyone knew the name 'Julia Morgan', recognized the house was beautiful, quirky, and important, and took care of it. I vaguely recall we had to remove our shoes.

I've been to Hearst Castle a few times and it is always simply unbelievable. Like visiting some remote European principality from another time. My old lecture was focused on that site, with a dash of the Asilomar building. In my research for that lecture, I really came to respect her as a working professional. In the profusion of activity at San Simeon, I think it might sometimes be overlooked what a difficult job Julia Morgan had. William Randolph Hearst constantly changed his mind and expanded the scope of the project. As construction proceeded, he shipped back pieces of buildings that she needed to incorporate into the design on-the-fly. She needed to manage all of this while commuting from San Francisco and working on dozens of other projects. Obviously she succeeded tremendously because San Simeon is marvelously resolved at every scale, and the demanding client hired her again and again.

I've never thought about it until now, but today I began wonder why I like Morgan's work so much, given that she practiced eclecticism, which usually displeases my own modernist sensibility. First thought: she had some strong affiliations with the Arts & Crafts movement, as shown by the Asilomar building and the Derby street house (and others, including maybe even the Refectory at Hearst Castle). Secondly, design quality transcends everything else, and her buildings have plenty of that.

When I noticed some hand-wringing online yesterday about the award, I immediately thought it was misplaced. Why politicize the issue? Let's assume it's an authentic decision and that Julia Morgan will have a well-deserved moment in the spotlight. Books will sell. People like me will find a place for her (again) in history courses.

On further reflection, though, I do understand the raising of a critical eyebrow. Gender biases favoring men, both in contemporary architecture and architectural history, are real and profound. Decisions that too-obviously seek to soothe over a deep historical wound can appear weak, arbitrary and gestural. Has Julia Morgan's memory become a sacrificial pawn in architecture's larger game of gender politics? It's a question worth discussing.

Also pertinent: "Unforgetting Women"

Hoyt Hottel's skepticism

Would you be surprised to learn that one of the most significant figures in the history of the solar house was never terribly excited about the prospects for solar heating? I'm referring to MIT engineering professor Hoyt Hottel, who designed and built the first-ever ‘active’ solar house, in 1939. In the book I call him a “skeptical innovator.”

http://webmuseum.mit.edu/browser.php?m=people&kv=10073&i=12284

Hottel's MIT Solar House I was a tremendous engineering success, using flat-plate hot-water collectors of his design. It produced as much heat as it needed on an annual basis. A year later, in 1940, he gave an extraordinary speech at Harvard. He complained that other scientists compared the amount of solar energy on an acre of land to a “healthy stream” of oil from a garden hose. He exclaimed: “solar power is not just there for the taking!”  A long excerpt from that witty speech is included in The Solar House (pages 101-102).

Here are a few more skeptical tidbits from Hottel which aren't included in the book:

“When we started we had high enthusiasm.  But we slowly came to realize that while there were uses of the sun, they were not as promising as we all thought they would be.” (1976)

“If you wish to lose the least money, get fifty percent of your heat from the sun.  If you wish to lose no money, don't get any.” (1976)

Here Hottel is reacting to the times; by the mid-1970s there was considerable public enthusiasm for the solar house concept, but an inexperienced industry to fill the need. 

Hottel’s campaign of restraint culminated in his article “Cloudy Forecast” in Skeptic magazine (Mar-Apr 1977), where he argued that the government shouldn't subsidize “presently available ideas that are economically shaky” but that they should look for “better ideas.” One might note that the predominant ‘presently available idea’ for solar house heating at that time was Hottel’s own: flat-plate collectors with water storage. He also predicted that solar’s future would depend upon principles which “remain to be discovered.” (And he didn't mean photovoltaics.)

I think a lot of creative people (like the subject of my earlier book, architect Gregory Ain) end up doubting the value of their work in retrospect, especially near the ends of their lives. Hottel was different: he didn’t necessarily doubt the importance of his own solar house experiments, but he (seemingly) wanted to prove—from the 1940s to the 1970s—that the active solar house wasn’t economically feasible at the time. He clearly took pride in his role as a skeptic, and believed he was making a contribution by broadcasting caution.

In the 1978 article “Tinkering with Sunshine,” Tracy Kidder wrote:

A consultant from Arthur D. Little would tell me later, “Hottel hasn't heard of the oil embargo.” A prominent inventor of passive systems would say, “Hottel's a man who bought a ticket on a horse and threw it away before the race was over. Now he can't bear to think that his horse might come in.” Hottel, for his part, has said that solar-heating enthusiasts base their case on emotion, not on natural law.

I wonder if any other figure in history had such strong record of innovation and impact in a field that they didn't necessarily believe would succeed.

(Note that Daniel Behrman also discussed Hottel’s “latter-day role as a Cassandra” in his 1976 book Solar Energy: The Awakening Science.)

Zeilenbau orientation and Heliotropic housing

Note: I later expanded on this subject in the paper: “Modern Architecture and Theories of Solar Orientation” for the 2014 ASES National Solar Conference.

● ● ●

John Perlin's new book Let It Shine: The 6,000-Year Story of Solar Energy is an impressive work and a rewarding read. It includes a very interesting section about German solar architecture of the 1920s and the well-known Zeilenbau (row-house) plans for public housing.

In Perlin's text I was struck by the presence of the phrase 'heliotropic housing', which he attributed to John Robert Mullin, who used it in a 1977 article.¹ Heliotropic means 'sun-responsive', or perhaps more accurately 'solar-oriented'. What Perlin did not mention is that 'Heliotropic housing' actually comes from Catherine Bauer's seminal book Modern Housing (1934), where she used the term as a section-heading for a short discussion of this same subject.

Bauer (later known as Catherine Bauer Wurster) said it was considered a "rule" in German housing that "every dwelling must face in two opposite directions."  She also wrote:

"[The] scientific optimum for Frankfurt's geographical position was a row-direction of north-north-west to south-south-east.  The living-rooms and kitchens are then put on the west side and the bedrooms and bathrooms, in so far as possible, on the east."

Major examples of Zeilenbau projects oriented with the long axis north-south, so that the units face east-west, include:

• Weissenhofseidlung by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and others (Stuttgart, 1927).

• Wohnstadt Carl Legien by Bruno Taut and Franz Hillinger (Berlin, 1928-30).

• Siedlung Westhausen by Ernst May (Frankfurt, 1929-31).

• Großsiedlung Siemenstadt by Martin Wagner, with Hans Scharoun, Walter Gropius, Hugo Häring and others (Berlin, 1929-34).

• Siedlung Dammerstock by Walter Gropius and others (Karlsruhe, 1929).

• Hellerhof Seidlung by Mart Stam (Frankfurt, 1929-32).

Of course the actual 'scientific optimum' for passive solar heating would be an east-west row-direction, so that the long side of the building faces south, where the winter sun is strongest.

Zeilenbau orientation, as exemplified by Dammerstock housing scheme by Walter Gropius (1927-28)
From: http://www.detail.de/architektur/themen/vom-sanatorium-zum-zeilenbau-000193.html

Zeilenbau orientation was the subject of controversy at the time, as Perlin mentions.  In Modern Housing, Catherine Bauer said "recent studies by Mr. Henry Wright" contradicted the German practice.  (Whether she referred to the father or the son, Henry N. Wright, is unclear.  I have not been able to find any studies by Wright conducted as early as 1934, so there's a future discovery to be made.)  Later in the extraordinary chapter on "Solar Heating" in Tomorrow's House (1945), Henry N. Wright outlined the critique of Zeilenbau orientation:

"It was in the Germany of the Weimar Republic that modern buildings were put up in the greatest quantities and frequently in the most interesting forms.  The architects of this period, which included most of the 1920's, had a theory about their glass buildings which they proceeded to put into effect.  The theory sounded very good.  It was that a long building, running north and south, would have its longest sides exposed to the east and west.  This meant, according to the theory. that the east rooms would get sun all morning and the west rooms would get sun all afternoon.

Once built, the structures themselves punched the theory full of holes. In the first place, the cost of heating these buildings was excessive. In the second place, the cheerful morning sun varied with the seasons. In midsummer there was plenty of sunlight coming in from the east, while in midwinter, when the sun rose far to the south, there was only a short time in which these rooms received the dubious benefits of their western exposure. In the third place, people living in the west rooms found that for most of the year this exposure was practically intolerable. The interiors were blistered in summer by the late afternoon sun, and the strong light coming in at a very low angle was unpleasant and hard to screen out with shades."

The full text of Tomorrow's House is linked from the Resources page.  Henry N. Wright was a major figure in the story of the solar house, and there is quite a bit more about him in the book.

Finally, Perlin asks: "How did these renowned architects err so badly?"  He concludes that they simply did not understand the science.

In my view, the Zeilenbau orientation requires a bit more exploration.  I would start by noting that European modern architects of the 1920s, conditioned by the sanatorium tradition, were generally concerned with licht and sonnschein rather than sonnenenergie.  (In fact, I would like to know when the phrase sonnenenergie, solarwärme or solarheizung first appeared in the German architectural discourse.  Probably in the 1940s or 50s.)  I figure that architects like Ernst May concluded that bedrooms needed direct sun in the mornings because heliotherapeutic considerations---health and hygiene---were stronger than energy use in the 20s.  

Some additional context on this matter is provided by the manifesto of Swedish modern architecture: acceptera, written by art historian Gregor Paulsson, with architects Gunnar Asplund, Wolter Gahn, Sven Markelius, Eskil Sundahl, Uno Åhrén, and published in 1931.  acceptera (tiden) meant "Accept the Times."  As may be expected, the Swedish approach is perfectly clear in its logic:

"...the demand that all modern dwellings get direct sunlight has endowed modern housing areas with a completely new character. It has necessitated an open style of building, with parallel blocks whose orientation is determined with reference to the sun, [long axis] east-west if there are through-apartments, otherwise north-south. The first building type is preferred as it permits cross-ventilation and provides a side that is genuinely sunny. But it requires through-apartments which, reducing the depth of the building, lead to longer facades as well as fewer apartments on each stairwell, such that this system is economically inferior to blocks that run from north to south."²

The east-west-facing orientation of the Zeilenbau, and the fact that it was (mistakenly) touted as a 'scientific optimum', probably explains why Le Corbusier oriented the Unité d’Habitation buildings to face east-west beginning in the late 40s. Even though the science was better-understood by that time, especially in America, I suppose Le Corbusier to some extent fell back on his memory of standard German practice.

Perlin also emphasized Hannes Meyer's interest in passive solar heating, of which I was not aware.  Meyer, according to Perlin, thought of the building as "a solar accumulator" and wanted to "obtain maximum exposure."  Meyer's position seems to blur the bright line I have sought to draw between sun-responsive architecture and solar-heated architecture.  Meyer worked with the Swiss Meteorological Institute, presumably to understand solar geometry better, or maybe even to try to estimate solar heat gains.  He does not seem to have spoken of energy savings.

---

¹Mullin, "City Planning in Frankfurt, Germany, 1925-1932: A Study in Practical Utopianism," Journal of Urban History , Nov. 1977.

²acceptera was translated and reprinted in Modern Swedish Design: Three Founding Texts, MoMA, 2008.