As a longtime advocate for sustainable building design, I have spent decades listening to people associate solar energy with ugly black boxes on the roof of the house that belonged to the neighborhood nutcase. I’m here to tell you those days are gone forever. I now find myself sharing the dais with the owners of those early solar systems. That nutcase is now a keynote speaker, and we’re finally beginning to appreciate the beauty of that vision.
Nowadays we’re bombarded with images that convey a different aesthetic of solar technology. Brilliant, elegant black solar panels gleaming in the sun against a perfect clear blue sky. Political candidates and even petroleum companies are parading their green initiatives with these beautiful images. Solar now means a sustainable future, clean energy, clean air, and a solution to global climate change. It might seem unusual, but in this case, the image matches the reality.
Historically, architects have translated new structural and functional technologies into elements of expression. We’ve done this with virtually every material we build with: stone, wood, concrete, steel, and composites. Our palate of materials has expanded throughout history for functional reasons, but as designers we use them to express shape, line, texture culture—and in the case of renewable technologies, powerful societal changes, values and aspirations. Now leaders in the architectural and construction communities are thirsting for new elements that express progressive aesthetics, elements that imbue meaning and value to the clean and sustainable energy movement.
We now have designers and architects using clean technology—solar energy, wind generator units, and other products and materials—as their preferred palate of expression. This is helping elevate early renewable energy enthusiasts to visionary status. And this contemporary connotation of clean and sustainable alternative energy is coming to your neighborhood and mine.
What needs to be understood, taught, and reinforced is that we
Author: Robert Noble
Robert Noble is an architect, environmental designer, industrial designer and environmental technology entrepreneur, which he calls an "ecopreneur." He has received numerous regional and national awards for his industrial and architectural designs, and green technology innovations. Over his 29-year career, he and/or his work has been awarded Entrepreneur Magazine's Environmental Innovator of the Year, the Edison Award for Environmental Achievement and "Best of What's New," Popular Science 100 Best of 1993, and awards from the American Institute of Architects, and the Urban Land Institute.
Noble is the founding CEO of Envision Solar, a San Diego architectural firm that is a worldwide leader in integrating solar photovoltaic technologies with the conventional building, real estate and transportation industries. Envision Solar designs, engineers and installs photovoltaic solar parking arrays and other commercial and residential solar-integrated building systems. As CEO of San Diego's Tucker Sadler Architects, he led a turn-around of the 50-year-old firm into the leading sustainable design firm in the region.
He is Past Chair of the US Green Building Council of San Diego, Past President of the American Institute of Architects of San Diego, Chairman of the Board of the California Center for Sustainable Energy, past Chair of the California American Institute of Architects Committee on the Environment, and Member of the San Diego Regional Sustainability Partnership.
He has written over 40 articles regarding sustainable design, USBGC LEED Certification, emergency shelter for disaster relief, renewable energy and other subjects. He has been a highly committed and vocal local, regional and national advocate of environmentally responsible manufacturing, design and planning, and low-cost, emergency and affordable housing for over 20 years.
He attended UC San Diego, UC Berkeley, Harvard Graduate School of Design and Harvard Business School, and Cambridge University Graduate Department of Architecture.
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