Solar Decathlon: From critic to participant

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Update: The University of Wyoming team placed fourth! [DOE link] [UWyo link]
(Not the Cinderella story we dreamed, but still a pretty great accomplishment.)

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I’m proud to be a faculty advisor to the Wind River house, the University of Wyoming student project for the 2023 Solar Decathlon, which concludes next week. This might be surprising, since I’ve been somewhat critical of the event over the years.

In The Solar House, which is primarily a historical study of the years 1933‒1973, I ended the book with a short discussion of the Decathlon to indicate the possible futures of the solar house. At that time, the Department of Energy-sponsored competition occurred on the National Mall in Washington, and therefore the houses needed to be small and transportable. I wrote:

The Solar Decathlon has endured criticism on a number of points. The need to build the houses at various home locations and then transport them to the competition site requires an inordinate amount of time, energy and cost for the teams. It also gives the competition itself a large carbon footprint. Narrow boxy shapes have predominated due to the rigors of transportation, but more problematically this requirement compels lightweight construction materials and effectively deters students from exploring thermal mass strategies.

And later:

Future historians will determine whether the Decathlon houses will be interpreted as peculiar vanity projects or whether a more profound meaning will emerge.

Then, here on this blog, I’ve posted a number of items, usually critical of the contest—though never of the student-participants:

The Next Solar Decathlon (Aug 2018) — signaling the shift to permanent houses
Too Expensive: The Solar Decathlon (redux) (Nov 2017)
Solar Decathlon 2017 (Oct 2017)
2017 Solar Decathlon: Denver (Mar 2016)
#SD2015 (Oct 2015) — I questioned using students as laborers
Help Wanted: The Solar Decathlon (Sep 2015) — my most pointed criticism and some suggestions which were adopted
Too Expensive: The Solar Decathlon (Sep 2015)
The “Shading Decathlon”? (Apr 2014)
The Solar Decathlon: Back to Irvine (Apr 2014)

So why did I agree to participate in the 2023 contest? Because they made two major changes:
1) Now, the houses are site-specific, site-built, and permanent. They are real and enduring, not transportable and temporary exhibitions. The artificial design problem of transportability (which dominated the contest) has been eliminated.
2) The student-teams are allowed to partner with builders and financial partners, shifting the effort to design, engineering, and project management, away from direct construction and fundraising.

With those factors in mind, here is some additional information about the Wind River house:

The Sun Queen

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Update: You can watch “The Sun Queen”: here

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I’m looking forward to “The Sun Queen,” a new documentary which explores the life of Mária Telkes. It will be shown on PBS, April 4. (I was asked to participate in this program, but it did not work out.)

Telkes is a significant figure in my book The Solar House. In it, I discuss in detail the 1948 Dover Sun House, engineered by Telkes with a novel method of attic-level heat storage using barrels of salt, and fan-powered distribution of hot air. It was surely “the most widely-published solar house ever” at the time, I wrote. The book also discusses her fractious relationship with Hoyt Hottel and the solar engineers at MIT.

Dover Sun House, from The Solar House.

Here is a link to the PBS press release. It says, in part:

Completed in 1948, the Dover Sun House was, unlike earlier prototypes, designed to be lived in by a family; that Christmas, the Nemethys, a Hungarian émigré family, moved in. It was soon one of the most famous houses in the country, and Telkes became a media celebrity. The “Sun Queen,” as she was known in the press, fast became the nation’s most visible face of the solar future. That fame, which Telkes leveraged to further the solar cause, came at a cost. The boys’ club at MIT was unimpressed by her latest project and, in 1953, she was fired.

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See also:
In the News: The Dover Sun House
Unearthed: Dover Sun House comic

Avenel Homes: Ain and Shulman

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A new article in The Nation, “The Most Dangerous Architect in America,” is a review of the book Notes from Another Los Angeles including my article “Under Surveillance.” The Nation used a Julius Shulman photo of Avenel Homes to illustrate Ain’s “hope for more egalitarian architecture.”

Julius Shulman Photo, used in The Nation. © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10).

Avenel Homes, a ten-unit cooperative, is a good choice; it’s Ain’s only completed project which comes close to ‘social housing’. It is on the National Register. Yet this particular image is a curious selection—it’s not a characteristic Shulman photo. Shulman’s photos are normally easily-readable, with a platonic unity of architectural form and crisp contrast. Here, the architecture can barely be deciphered, and the shade structure in the overhead-foreground was added by the owner, not a part of Ain’s design. Shulman’s photo certainly doesn’t convey a sense of the project’s high design quality. I don’t recall it being used in the publications of the time. For the article in The Nation, it’s particularly odd because it doesn’t convey the concept of Ain’s ‘dangerous’ political character at all.

The Nation could have used Shulman’s more classical view of Avenel Homes, shown below. But this doesn’t look particularly political either, and again does not give a sense of the project. (Would you guess there are ten units? Would you be able to describe the project?) I’ve looked at a lot of photos of the project, and taken many of my own, none of which convey its true meaning. The point is not to criticize The Nation or Shulman, but rather to suggest that Avenel Homes is essentially an unphotographable work of architecture. Maybe somebody with a drone will change my mind.

Julius Shulman photo. © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10).

Indeed, Ain was frustrated by architectural photography in general, as I wrote in Gregory Ain (Rizzoli, 2008):

He was apparently dissatisfied with many of the photographers who were his contemporaries….  In fact, Ain worked with seventeen different photographers between 1936 and 1952, as if he were constantly, fruitlessly, searching for the artist who could correctly portray his architectural ideas.

Ain became so dismayed at the preponderance of photographs over plans in architectural magazines that he audaciously proposed a moratorium on the use of photographs in all such publications.  It was a serious suggestion; he apparently developed the idea while he was an educator in the 1960s, and he repeated it twice in separate interviews in the late 1970s.

How could The Nation have done better? I’m not sure. There are no canonical images which truly convey Ain’s aspirations for cooperative or communal architecture. There is no Village Green in Ain’s ouevre. (Indeed this probably is the key limitation on his historical greatness.) At Park Planned Homes and to a lesser extent Mar Vista, there are subtle indications of shared space but ultimately these are private, detached, single-family homes. And there are no clear photographs, as far as I know, that would illustrate Ain’s political identity or the investigation of him—he did not testify before McCarthy or Tenney, for example. The photograph to represent ‘the most dangerous architect in America’ remains elusive.

Best of 2022

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Cheers to 2022! Here are a few notes on the year in review.

Solar House History: The Hunn House
Earlier this year I was happy to see that Bruce Hunn wrote a retrospective piece for the American Solar Energy Society (ASES) website. It reminded me that Hunn, an engineer, built one of the most striking solar houses of the 1970s. A two-story trombe wall—what a remarkable example of solar form! Because of its expressive power, you might be wondering: who was the architect? Hunn designed the house himself, he says, “with the assistance of designer and architect friends.”

Hunn House, White Rock, New Mexico (1976)

The Hunn house is not included in The Solar House; I honestly don’t remember why it did not make it into the final edit. (There were so many examples after 1973!)

Solar Decathlon
I’m loosely involved with the University of Wyoming’s project for the 2023 Solar Decathlon—“Wind River”—which is now under construction near Lander, Wyoming. UW students designed the house and its systems. The project’s emphasis is to show zero-energy houses are market-ready; thus there are no experimental technologies and it is designed in a “Minimal Mountain Modern” style (credit to student Erika Ferrell for that label).
The competition will occur in April 2023 and I’m excited for our student team! We’re collaborating with Cory Toye (Timshel Construction) who is financing and building the project.
Follow along at the project website; new content coming throughout the Spring.

In the past, both in The Solar House and here on the blog, I was fairly critical of the Solar Decathlon. When the Decathlon required transportable houses to be small, transportable (lightweight), and essentially temporary and site-less, I felt that it was sending the wrong message about low-energy and solar architecture. It was also very expensive for schools. Now that the competition is refocused on permanent buildings, local sites, and collaborations with builders, I’m happy to be a part of it.

The Big Roof, redux
A few years ago I christened “The Big Roof” as a new style for signature public buildings. The Big Roof is an expressive environmental feature, providing shade and a greater area for solar panels. Often the roof is formally detached from the main body of the building, with its own structure. Here are some newer examples confirming the trend.

1. Houston Endowment Headquarters by Kevin Daly Architects link
2. Environmental Nature Center and Preschool by LPA Design Studios link
3. Ashes & Diamonds winery by Barbara Bestor link
4. Children’s Surgical Hospital in Uganda by Renzo Piano Building Workshop link
5. Delhi Noida International Airport by Nordic Office of Architecture, Grimshaw, and Haptic link
6. House of Wisdom (Sharjah Digital Library) by Foster + Partners link

Travels: Minneapolis
On a short trip to Minneapolis (my hometown) I only had about an hour of free time, and I stopped at the Walker Art Center and captured this familiar view. And RIP to Claes Oldenburg, who passed away in 2022.

Publications & Talks
• My article “Bruno Mathsson’s Solar Architecture” was published at nonsite.org. Mathsson is well-known as a furniture designer, but he also created a new language of glass architecture for Swedish homes and introduced several environmental innovations. Despite Mathsson’s interest in Fred Keck and the solar house movement, I conclude that his houses could not have delivered energy savings as designed. I wrote a summary here.
• My article “Gregory Ain: Under Surveillance” was published in the book Notes from Another Los Angeles: Gregory Ain and the Construction of a Social Landscape (MIT Press), edited by Anthony Fontenot. It concludes: “Was Ain the most dangerous architect in America at midcentury? It certainly appears he was viewed as such, within the FBI, and treated as such. Did he earn that distinction willingly? It certainly appears so.” A summary is here, and a review in The Nation is here.
• In August I spoke to the staff of Unity Homes, in New Hampshire, about Swedish house factories.
• In April, with Robert Boyce, I spoke about Fred Keck's 1933 House of Tomorrow for the Elmhurst Art Museum. link to video
• In March I gave a talk called “People who live in glass houses...” to the UW Honors colloquium. It looked at Hardwick Hall, the Palm house at Kew, and the Farnsworth house, through different interpretive lenses.

Historic architecture, plus solar
Check out Gloucester Cathedral!

Bruno Mathsson’s Solar Architecture

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My article “Bruno Mathsson’s Solar Architecture” is published here. Mathsson is an immensely-interesting mid-century Swedish furniture designer and architect. I conclude Mathsson internalized both the ‘glass house’ and the ‘solar house’ as new types, although these “were fundamentally incongruent in concept.” Ultimately he was more interested in the therapeutic and psychological effects associated with glass architecture than in the energy savings promised by solar architecture. (Passive solar energy savings are difficult in Sweden, as the data shows in my article, but Mathsson tried—by inventing Brunopane.)

I also find that Mathsson’s Villa Södrakull (1965) is “a true masterwork of mid-century modernism.” Mathsson imagined “Swedish homes of the future will be a kind of greenhouse with tropical heat,” and here it is, including a green glass floor and tropical textiles by Josef Frank:

Credit: Tina Stafrén / Visit Sweden.