User:Yonkpadonk/sandbox

History
The idea of passive solar building design first appeared in Greece around the fifth century B.C. Up until that time, the Greek's main source of fuel was charcoal, but due to a major shortage of wood to burn they were forced to find a new way of heating their dwellings. With necessity as their motivation, the Greeks revolutionized the design of their cities. They began using building materials that absorbed solar energy, mostly stone, and also started orienting the buildings so that they faced south. These revolutions, coupled with an overhang that kept out the hot summer sun, created structures which required very little heating and cooling. Socrates wrote, "In houses that look toward the south, the sun penetrates the portico in winter, while in summer the path of the sun is right over our heads and above the roof so that there is shade." From this point on, most civilizations have oriented their structures to provide shade in the summer and heating in the winter. The Romans improved on the Greek's design by covering the southern facing windows with different types of transparent materials. Another simpler example of early solar architecture is the cave dwellings in the South-Western regions of North America. Much like the Greek and Roman buildings, the cliffs in which the indigenous people of this region built their homes were oriented towards the south with an overhang to shade them from the midday sun during the summer months and capture as much of the solar energy during the winter as possible. A more complex and modern incarnation of Solar Architecture was introduced in 1954 with the invention of the photovoltaic cell by Bell Labs. Early cells were extremely inefficient and therefore not widely used, but throughout the years government and private research has improved the efficiency to a point where it is now a viable source of energy. Universities were some of the first buildings to embrace the idea of solar energy. In 1973, the University of Delaware built Solar One, which was one of the world’s first solar powered houses. As photovoltaic technologies keep advancing, solar architecture becomes easier to accomplish. In 1998 Subhendu Guha developed photovoltaic shingles and recently a company called Oxford Photovoltaics has developed perovskite solar cells that are thin enough to incorporate into windows. Although the windows are not scaled to a size that can be taken advantage of on a commercial level yet, the company believes that the outlook is very promising. In the company’s mission statement they state, “Moreover, through the deployment of solar cells in areas where solar has traditionally struggled, for example the glass façades of high-rise commercial or residential buildings. In both cases, allowing solar energy to contribute a much higher proportion of electricity than is possible today, and helping to position PV as a significant factor in the global energy market.”

Examples
One of the first large commercial buildings to exemplify solar architecture is 4 Times Square (also known as the Condé Nast Building) in New York City, New York. It has built in solar panels on the 37th through the 43rd floors and incorporated more energy efficient technology than any other sky scraper at the time of it's construction. The World Games Stadium in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, designed by the world famous japanese architect Toyo Ito, is a dragon-shaped structure that has 8,844 solar panels on its roof that generate 1.14 million kilowatts annually. It was built in 2009 to house the 2009 world games. Constructed completely of recycled materials, it is the largest solar powered stadium in the world and powers the surrounding neighborhood when it’s not in use. Another example of solar architecture is the Sundial Building in China. It was built to symbolize the need for replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources. The building is shaped like a fan and is covered in 50000 square feet of solar panels. It was named the world's largest solar powered office building in 2009. Although it’s not completed yet, the Solar City Tower in Rio de Janeiro Brazil is another example of what solar architecture might look like in the future. It is a power plant that generates energy for the city during the day while also pumping water to the top of the structure. At night, when the sun isn’t shining, the water will be released to run over turbines that will continue to generate electricity. It is set to be revealed at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, although the completion of the project is still up in the air as the project is still in the proposal phase.

Criticism
According to an article on ECN's webiste titled "Architects just want to develop attractive buildings", an architects main purpose is to, "create a spatial object with lines, shapes, colours and texture. These are the challenges for the architect within the customer’s programme of requirements. But they do not immediately think of using a solar panel as an interesting building material. There is still much to be achieved here.” In the article it is stated multiple times that solar panels are not an architects first choice for building material because of there cost and aesthetics. Another critisim of installing solar panels is there upfront cost. According to energyinfomation.org, the average cost for a residential solar system is somewhere between 15,000 to 40,000 dollars and about 7 dollars per watt. In the article, it says that at todays rates, it would take nten years to pay off the system.