Paul Bouet: The Building as Solar Collector: Experiments and Theories around the 1970s Oil Crisis

Before the proliferation of photovoltaic panels since the 1990s, the use of solar energy in architecture was explored as an integral part of building design. The lecture examines this history, from the rise over the depletion of fossil fuels around World War II to the backlash of solar energy and environmentalism in the 1980s. While the emergence of modern architecture is interwoven with greater attention to the sun, its radiation, and the openness of interiors to the outdoors, the potential for converting sunlight into usable heat was only fully explored and understood as of the late 1930s in the USA. The first experiments conducted by architects, engineers, and scientists in the USA were soon followed by new research undertaken in Europe, particularly in France by the chemist Félix Trombe. In the early 1970s, the rise of environmentalism and the onset of the oil crisis provoked a wave of enthusiasm for the promises of solar energy, leading to many debates and experiments. Soon a controversy arose among the partisans of this “natural” energy, pitting the proponents of passive technologies against the advocates of active technologies, as both held antagonistic positions on the aesthetic and political implications of solar devices in buildings. In parallel with this controversy, a more historical endeavor was undertaken to reread the past of architecture in search of models of climatic adaptation. This led to attempts to reconcile technological innovation with the long history of architecture, shaping what could have been an environmental postmodernism. In the end, the whole effort to think of buildings themselves as solar collectors collapsed, and the dependence of structures on external energies continued, fueling environmental degradation with all its invisible consequences.

Dr. Paul Bouet is the inaugural Eiermann Postdoctoral Fellow at the gta Institute.