Feeling Images of the Sun on Earth

Abstract

We are solar societies with diverse relationships and practices that revolve around the Sun. But as mechanical systems became reliable, we retreated to thermally controlled environments away from the Sun. Energy became a utility to feed these systems. As the time spent indoors increased, energy demands rose alongside its greenhouse emissions; and the connection to our Star was reduced to a utility with a paradoxical duality: both as a valuable source of energy to be maximized, and a nuisance in the summer to be minimized. Dealing with this conundrum, architecture has divided sunlight into two experiential components. The aesthetic qualities of light are reserved for its visual phenomenon, while its thermal characteristic is either portrayed as a renewable energy source to be utilized outside of the design domain, or as a nuisance to be shaded from.

In this thesis, I explore sunlight as a carrier of energy – where energy is seen as mass, and our visual and thermal experiences are determined by intensity and contrast of the mass of the Sun falling on Earth. Building off landscape practices that created diverse microclimates with sunlight, solar capturing techniques are analyzed and reimagined as parts of analogue machines that translate the homogonous array of sunlight falling on an outdoor public site into a landscape of concentrated energies. The proposal is a temporal field of hot – and perhaps even burning – surfaces that provide warm moments that act as urban hearths for people to collimate around in an otherwise cold empty park in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Leveraging recent advancements in computer graphics, a ray-tracing tool is developed to estimate solar collector energy output and visualize light concentration of different geometries and materials across varying solar positions. By repurposing solar technologies to heat small volumes for short periods of time, this thesis reimagines how we might view the Sun’s energy – from utility to a metaphysical cosmic mass– creating images that can be felt even on a cold cloudy day.