Solar Lab: Personal
This Lab explores "embodied interactions" with solar energy and make the technology approachable, tactile and inviting.
Energy systems are typically placed out of sight and operate in the background of our experience. Solar Design opens possibilities for direct, embodied interaction with energy in the everyday living environment. This can make energy more tangible, and while the sun’s energy is abundant, her rhythm also dictates new patterns of use of energy.
Solar designers are both questioning and expanding the materiality of solar technology by proposing new ways to integrate the technology with other materials. Their work gives new emotional and aesthetic values to solar technology by making it for instance colorful, soft and cuddly, pliable, invisible, modular or full of playful patterns. This makes solar energy more user friendly, understandable and approachable.
How can personal interactions with energy be made more visible and tangible, and what values and qualities of the sun can we use to make this relationship more conscious and meaningful?
Design a “solar design probe” - a material, artifact or product - meant for personal interactions in an everyday living context. This probe explores solar energy through all our bodily senses: seeing, feeling & touching, hearing, smelling and tasting. What qualities of the sun are materialized in the design probe and how can people engage with these qualities both physically and emotionally.
The Solar Lab program will feature several leading solar designers, solar researchers and solar material engineers to provide inspiration, share their extensive knowledge and provide feedback on participant's ideas. Among others with leading solar designer Pauline van Dongen, researcher Angella Mackey and researcher and co-founder Georgia Kareola.
This lab is for everyone who wonders: how to become a solar designer? Both beginners as more advanced designers are welcome. No solar insider knowledge is necessary.
The Solar Lab - Personal will take place at and in collaboration with the New Order of Fashion Institute (NOoF) in Eindhoven. NOoF is an international platform for exceptional fashion talent that enables forward thinking designers to boost the revolution of and the transition to a circular fashion industry. The NOoF Lab and Atelier will provide participants with professional and accessible tools and materials to work and experiment with.
Get your ticket
For whom?
This lab is for everyone who wonders: how to become a solar designer? Both beginners as well as more advanced designers are welcome. No solar insider knowledge is necessary.Participation costs 150 Euros, which includes daily beverages and lunch. The Solar Lab can facilitate a maximum of 15 participants.
When and where?
26.09.2022 - 29.09.2022
NOoF (New Order of Fashion) and TU/e in Eindhoven
New Order of Fashion is the international platform for exceptional fashion talent. NOoF supports sustainability in fashion by presenting fresh and radical perspectives through innovation, experimentation and co-creation.
The Solar Labs are taking place twice and both are a 4-day intensive program focused on knowledge sharing and knowledge development.
Purpose
The purpose of the Solar Labs is twofold:
a. Promoting knowledge development around Solar Design, so that more and more people can help build our solar future.
b. Stimulating more connections between professionals from various disciplines who collectively play a role in envisioning and creating new solar futures
Both Labs (Personal & Spatial) are organized around a central research question that leads the participants to formulate one or more answers through a design probe. Each day a different expert will share knowledge through an interactive lecture or workshop. Next to these sessions, participants are invited to experiment hands-on with solar materials and applications resulting in the creation of a Solar Design “Probe”.Participants will engage in a design process using the materials and tools made available to them. Mentors and experts are invited to provide inspiration, guidance and reflection to the group of participants.
The Labs are well documented through photography and video, in order for the process and results to be shared with the wider public during DDW ‘22.