Public Art

Boulos Douaihy
Designed for Site #2 in Abu Dhabi, between Saadiyat Island and Yas Island.

Design Submission for the 2010 Land Art Generator Initiative Design Competition

Artist’s descriptive text:
Our installation is a celebration of the sun’s “aura” on earth. It emphasizes the sun’s cycle during the day and year and quantifies and shows the energy produced by sunlight.

A forest of metallic geodesic spheres with a photovoltaic hemisphere rotate on their axis following the movement of the sun during the day, collecting sunlight and transforming it into electricity stocked in underground batteries, allowing their rotation.

The energy collected during the day will be exposed during the night through light emitted from the same photovoltaic hemisphere. The more energy collected, the more the light is intense. Summer nights being the most lit.

The spheres start the day by welcoming the first sunrays at dawn and follow the sun’s path becoming self-sufficient sun watches. During the night, the spheres become lit crescents seen from afar, indicating the night time.

The Moon and the Sea

Our installation emphasizes the effect of the sun and moon on the sea by exaggerating the tide’s action on the shore’s outline.

The land, bound by the highway on one side and open to the sea on the other, is topographically manipulated to form mounds of different levels creating platforms hosting the spheres and disappearing into the sea.

As the tide goes up, the water surrounding the mounds create islands of variables sizes and shapes, continuously changing the shore line and putting the “photovoltaic spheres” in different situations.

Sun Islands

Visitors to the “sun islands” can examine the spheres from the highway or can go island hopping and experience the different outlines created by the tide.

During the day, the spheres create shaded spaces allowing for potential camping or picnic spots. During the night, the spheres light up the park , where different activities can take place: jogging, music festivals, stars watching etc…

low-res version PDF of submitted boards

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Sherri J. Newman and Jen Earle
Designed for Site #3 in Abu Dhabi, on Airport Road near Masdar City.

Design Submission for the 2010 Land Art Generator Initiative Design Competition

Artist’s descriptive text:
The concept for our land art generator is a response to the conditions of its environment. This was accomplished through site movement and patterns, local climate, and cultural geometry.

The viewing platform for the Land Art Generator will take place from the frame of a window, as local Abu Dhabi citizens and tourists circulate around the site. The movement, both by highway and airplane traffic from Abu Dhabi’s International Airport informed the design of the structure with the intention of conveying a sense of motion from within a static object. The subject would view the sculpture from the reference point of a car or airplane window and as the viewer rotates around the object varying perspectives are produced from different angles and in three dimensions.

Smart textiles are layered over the sculpture as a temperature sensitive skin accomplished by thermochromic dyes. As the ambient air temperature and light intensity change throughout the course of the day, the textile would vary in color and effectively act as both a visual thermometer and indictor of how much solar activity is being collected by the installation, giving a visual tangibility and aesthetic quality to clean energy consumption. Responsive textiles allow for environmental readings that will engage citizens.

The underlying geometry of the form is based on tangents, utilizing the cultural significance of triangles in Islamic architecture. An organic form emerged from this geometry, by patterning catenary curves around tangent points. Finally, the pattern used to layer soft PVCs onto the textile was inspired by the texture of date fields surrounding the site; evident from aerial views.

The lightweight, tensile design allows for minimal environmental impact, and a chance to present solar energy to a new generation of consumers.

The island,
carved by the machine,
fluid lines of the outer shell display the dynamic force,
motion contains the object,
Impenetrable boundary.

Nature maintains the periphery,
Containing from within,
The vastness of the island.

The object,
Engaging,
contained at rest,
invites the subject,
into motion.

low-res version PDF of submitted boards

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Michal Teague and David Moore
Designed for Site #3 in Abu Dhabi, on Airport Road near Masdar City.

Design Submission for the 2010 Land Art Generator Initiative Design Competition

Artist’s descriptive text:
Sunset (running on empty) is a counter monument heralding the sunset of the era of petrol-based car culture. It comprises a purpose made video artwork shown in a replica installation of the iconic drive-in cinema, featuring a large screen, advertising marquee and car park that is the electricity-generating component of the design. The video artwork is a temporal-based narrative depicting a car driven continuously until the petrol tank runs dry. The car will remain permanently parked in the middle of the renewable energy generating ‘car park.’

The drive–in cinema is an icon of the 20th century. Sunset (running on empty) acts as a counter-monument marking the sunset of large petrol-guzzling cars. A drive-in cinema is an artefact from a carefree era, before knowledge of climate change and the finite nature of carbon-based resources.

The word ‘Sunset’ refers to the end of the day, and the inevitability of change, it is also commonly used to describe an era that is coming to a close, as well as being a popular name during the heyday of the drive-in cinema.

The drive-in cinema initially seems deliberately out of context in the UAE. A nostalgic folly from another time and place. However, it speaks to the global and interrelated nature of the need to adopt clean and renewable energy sources.

Drive-in cinemas were traditionally sited on the outskirts of a city with easy access to a main roadway similar to the conditions existing at Site 3 Abu Dhabi. The advent of the VCR and increasing land value, meant that many have now become shopping centres and housing developments. The drive-in like oil is becoming scarcer, there now being only 700 odd left in the world.

Video installation–a car is filled with petrol then starts its final drive in and around Abu Dhabi. The drive is documented until the petrol is finally used up, eventually coming to rest at its final parking site the Sunset drive-in cinema.

Screen – known in the original vernacular as a ‘sheet.’A large outdoor screen powered by an open solar field. It is envisaged the screen will be placed in a westerly direction on site, approximating where the sunsets.

Marquee–an illuminated sign advertising the session times of the film ‘Running on Empty’ to people passing the site.The title can be interpreted literally as referring to the fuel gauge of a car and more broadly fossil fuels becoming scarcer. Additionally nuance comes from the two ‘coming of age’ genre films both titled ‘Running On Empty’. An Australian film made in 1982 featuring a young man involved in street drag racing and a 1988 U.S. production about a fugitive family on the run from the FBI and the eldest son seeking to live a life of his own.

Parked car – the ordinary car is permanently parked on site in the midst of the electricity-generating field after featuring in the video production.

Ramps– a replica of a Drive-in Cinema car parking area laid in a fan-shape. Rather than the more traditional material of asphalt it will be anelectricity-generatingfield with the solitary car, mutely watching itself on screen.

Option A: The preferred technological option for this component of the installation is to use Solar Roadway technology currently undergoing prototyping in the U.S. Having communicated with the developers full-production is probably 2 years off. However it would provide the option of the audience being able to safely walk or even drive on the electricity-generating surface. The product can also have LED lights embedded to create patterns, images and text. In respect to dust and sand, it will be able to be cleaned when required using a street sweeper.

Option B: a ‘car ramp’ formed by a black field of currently commercially available photovoltaic solar panels.

The dominant features of Site 3 Abu Dhabi – Airport Road near the Masdar City Site, are the surrounding roadways that delineate its boundary. The art installation foregrounds the role of the car and human behaviours, which influence the site, just as much as the naturally occurring phenomena – wind, sun, wildlife, vegetation, and occasionally water. In this way, the drive-in cinema installation is truthfully integrated into the surrounding environment and landscape.

The solar electricity-generating field will cause minimal interference with the ground of the site. The natural vegetation of the site would be permitted to grow in and around the art installation to enhance the feeling of it being an abandoned place from another time.He design uses a portion rather than the whole site.

Solar roadway 300 panels would generate 2.28MWhr – based on 15 % efficiency and a conservative 4 hours of sun per day. While 500 panels would produce an estimated 3.8MWhr.

The project design aims to be accessible to pedestrian foot traffic. With the solar roadway technology there is the potential for it to become a playground for the public. This would occur by using the embedded LED lighting to create games and maze designs for example.

The screen and car park ramps have the potential to become part of the public infrastructure of Abu Dhabi becoming a site to stage events and to screen the work of video artists during film and arts festivals rather than a static art installation.

low-res version PDF of submitted boards

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Oleg Lobykin
with renderings by Transparent House
Designed for Site #2 in Abu Dhabi, between Saadiyat Island and Yas Island.

Design Submission for the 2010 Land Art Generator Initiative Design Competition

Artist’s descriptive text:
Solaris is a sculptural art installation comprised of hundreds of photovoltaic panels arranged in the pattern of a familiar cultural ornamental. This approach combines the benefits of modern technology for producing solar energy as electricity with a visual representation of traditional images having cultural significance. Due to its size and proximity to the airport, the site offers an opportunity to showcase a design from an aerial vantage point that is quite distinctive and provides an attractive alternative to a strictly utilitarian configuration of panels in flat straight rows.

From an aesthetic perspective, this approach offers several benefits. Panels may be manufactured in a handful of different geometric shapes, such as triangular and rhomboid, and then arranged in a virtually unlimited number of configurations to create customized patterns of design. This versatility allows the concept to be replicated in various locations with minimal cost for customization, straightforward and scalable manufacturing and installation, and site-specific design specifications for pattern development.

From an environmental perspective, solar power is a renewable resource that is ideally suited to the site. Sunlight is plentiful throughout the year, and because the site is already mostly devoid of vegetation a photovoltaic installation would add to the renewable power base without posing any significant risk to existing flora and fauna.

Solaris will contain 1,418 photovoltaic (PV) panels and will have a peak capacity of 45 MW. This amount will be sufficient not only to provide for the ongoing energy needs of the site itself, including an interactive visitor center, but also for other commercial or residential buildings in the area.

On the side nearest the coast, the PV panels will be arranged along the coastline itself. They will integrate the design seamlessly into its environment and also mark the contour of the coastline at a particular point in time so that any future changes in it will be easily visible.

In addition, there is 25m high dome structure integrated into the design which can serve as a visitor center and environmental science interactive museum that collects and presents information about the effects of climate change around the world.

Multi-media exhibits could connect viewers in real time to events occurring in particular places on the planet, such as rainforests, glaciers, oceans, etc. and act as a historical record of changes over time.

The name “Solaris” is taken from the novel of the same name published in 1961 by Stanislaw Lem. The novel depicts the relationship between people of the future and “the rational ocean”, which the artist sees as a metaphor for nature itself. The issue at hand is the coexistence of human beings and the natural environment.

The arrangement of the solar panels in this proposal is intended to be illustrative of the concept. Airline travelers to and from Abu Dhabi will be able to view the design as they approach or depart the city by air, while visitors to the site at ground level will experience a sensation of passing along the coast of an “industrial ocean” by car from the road. Stopping at the site, visitors will be able to walk under the “canopy” of an “industrial jungle” to the dome-shaped visitor center and observe any changes in the shape or location of the coastline that may have taken place since installation. In this way, viewers will see Solaris very differently depending upon their perspective in relation to it. The Solaris installation will generate environmental awareness using the universal language of art.

low-res version PDF of submitted boards

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Ann Preston, sculptor and Roger White, architect
Designed for Site #3 in Abu Dhabi, on Airport Road near Masdar City.

Design Submission for the 2010 Land Art Generator Initiative Design Competition

Artist’s descriptive text:
A Sculptural Artwork Using Aperiodic 3-D Tiling Patterns to Create a Pavilion, Plaza and 6MW Solar Field

Mathematical and visual principles that evoke the long, Middle-Eastern tradition of architectural tiling patterns are central to this project. The central building structure, which is the hub of an expanded, three-dimensional tiling pattern, is a sculptural artwork composed of a combination of transparent, translucent and opaque solar cells. This building is an open-air pavilion and is formed from just four tetrahedral blocks in different generations of scale. The two- and three-dimensional patterns generated by the assembly of these tetrahedral elements begin in a single inscribed plaque in the building’s entrance and expand outward to fill the entire site: first to form the Pavilion itself and eventually to encompass a multi-use outdoor plaza and gardens and more than 500,000 square feet, or about 55,000 square meters, of solar generator fields.

The ultimate goal is to make solar energy plants beautiful, transforming them into cultural resources that are pleasing to the eye and mind, and enriching the life of the community. This combination of art and clean energy would be an inviting place to visit, becoming a center of local and international tourism.

This artwork would produce more than 6MW of electrical power. Because of the inherent scalability of the tiling designs, the project buildings and fields could be easily reduced in size, or expanded indefinitely to even grander solar arrays.

The sculptural, central building, an open air pavilion, is the nucleus of the pattern for the entire site. The solar panels are attached to a geodesic framework and cover most of the building. In the eastern section is a tetrahedral dome filled with translucent, frosted colored glass forms. The floor is tiled in an expanding spiral pattern using single faces of the tetrahedra. From an observation deck, visitors will be able to view the unity and beauty of the overall design, including the complex pavilion design, the plaza below, and the more distant solar array fields.

The building is intended to be a solar cell demonstration using custom photovoltaic glazing which can be screened between sheets of glass as Building Integrated Photovoltaics, in varying patterns, degrees of heat conductivity, opacity, shapes and colors. The solar cells are intrinsic to the building materials. The geodesic qualities of the basic three-dimensional tiling elements that comprise the building provide superb structural strength, belying the graceful almost diaphanous visual appeal of the pavilion.

The extraordinary two-dimensional, mathematical, architectural tiling patterns of the Middle East are based on a small set of shapes and subdivisions, which can fill the void with repetitions and permutations. Here, we use a three-dimensional tiling pattern, which functions similarly. It is composed of four, four sided forms or tetrahedra. These are based on the work of the renowned mathematician, Ludwig Danzer.

The tetrahedral have interesting and complex properties:

• They can be combined in patterns that fill 3D space without voids.

• These patterns are aperiodic. Unlike bricks, they cannot be assembled into a single, regular pattern that repeats. Instead they radiate out in varying angles and combinations.

• The ratios of the edges of each tetrahedron are related to the Golden Mean, a ratio of proportion found abundantly in nature and which has been employed for centuries to generate visually pleasing art and architecture.

• Each tetrahedron can be built from a subset of smaller versions of these same four forms, as can the smaller versions in turn, ad infinitum.

• 2D patterns can be derived from individual faces of the tetraheda, when the edges of the smaller subsets of forms that comprise a tetrahedral tile are marked on each face of the tetrahedron. As ever-smaller subsets of tetrahedra are included, increasingly extensive, elaborate 2-D and 3-D patterns can be produced.

All of the forms in the building, plaza, and solar generator fields are composed of different scale generations of these four forms as they manifest themselves in two and three dimensions.

The Solar Pavilion is surrounded by a plaza, which continues the tiling designs of the building and its flooring. This area provides a very simple, drought tolerant (xeric) garden with a few native shade trees and patterned areas. All vegetation is to be designed in collaboration with local, horticultural expertise to employ indigenous, self-sustaining plants. The plaza would embrace the importance of the sun. It would contain: a large sundial, or solar clock; a café; and exhibition spaces.

There is a mathematical substructure to music, which promotes a sense of rigor and beauty, but need not be understood consciously. The role of structure in this work is similar, and suggests an affinity between music and Arabic tile art.

low-res version PDF of submitted boards

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George Legendre, Emanuele Mattutini, Jean-Aime Shu,
and Alfonso Senatore
Designed for Site #3 in Abu Dhabi, on Airport Road near Masdar City.

Design Submission for the 2010 Land Art Generator Initiative Design Competition

Artist’s descriptive text:
Introduction
PV (for Photovoltaic) Dust is a site-specific Land Art installation producing clean energy with astonishing efficiency. It is strategically located on the outskirts of Masdar City, the first zero-carbon-footprint agglomeration in the world, next to Abu Dhabi Airport, UAE.

PV Dust covers 175,000m2 of desert ground with a new breed of photovoltaic technology, aggregating into a cloud of energy-producing dust. The PV Dust cloud has an eerie presence, recalling the great desert sand storms of the Gulf.

Below the cloud, a network of sand-coloured gravel paths striates the territory. Seen from the flight path of incoming, airport-bound jets, the forking pathways assume the appearance of traditional Islamic lattices. Made of sand-colored gravel, Pebbles and crushed roof tiles, this landscape relies on a distinct desert palette and does not need to be watered.

At the heart of PV Dust lies a new lower-ground complex of leisure and retail amenities, conveniently located on the Masdar City Light Railway Transit system. The complex facilitates access to an otherwise isolated location and helps maximize the commercial potential of the site.

Future Visions
PV Dust, the photovoltaic farm of the future, is made of 279 cubic modules of 25m*25m*25m featuring innovative, omni-directional PV technology.

Our proposal for a new type of PV farm works with, and extends, the green transportation guidelines issued by and for the neighboring Masdar City. At the time of writing we assume that the LRT will be located underground. If not, the position of the PV module grid takes into account the hypothetical route of the LRT and could be adapted to work with an over-ground light transportation system (simply by removing those modules standing in the way).

Hence PV Dust is a scenario as much as a proposal. Depending on the amount of energy required, the modular PV Dust cloud could be resized to meet those needs, and then grow incrementally over an unspecified period of time, like an orchard or vine.

A Compact and Powerful Idea
At peak power, the Sphelar® Cells used by PV Dust produce around 40 MW (please refer to next section). To generate a similar amount of electricity, an alternative solution using traditional flat PVs would require 310,159m2 of polycrystalline photovoltaic panels.

Our installation fits on just 174,375m2 of land. This is about 57% of the catchment of flat PVs. Our proposal has a substantially smaller footprint, it does not block access to the ground, and it spares valuable earthbound resources.

How Sphelar® Works
Flat solar cells are unable to effectively harness indirect light. Moreover, in order to obtain a stable supply of power, their orientation needs to face the sun. By contrast, the new Sphelar® Cell technology developed by Kyosemi Corporation, Japan, captures light from all directions at once, including reflected and diffused light. Its spherical light-receiving surface does not need to track the sun, and hence, Sphelar® achieves unprecedented levels of energy efficiency.

With a diameter of a mere 1 to 1.5mm, Sphelar® Cells can be connected in parallel or in series. This enables diverse spherical products to be created, such as dome-shaped solar cells and “flexible” solar cells aligned on soft film substrates. Our proposal assumes Sphelar® Cells are grafted on a light plastic sphere of 500mm diameter, called a Host. Collectively, the Hosts make PV Dust.

Art Installation / Proper Power Plant
PV Dust functions as a proper power plant. Solar irradiation is collected by the Sphelar Cells, which generate DC electricity. DC electricity is converted into AC electricity by Inverters. Each 25m*25m bay has its own Inverter, located at its base in a small buried plant. Once DC is converted into AC, 20 11kV Transformers transform the voltage and pass it to 4 Main Network Transformers that feed it to a switch board. These devices are located in an underground plant on the edge of the site, cooled via a passive ventilation system (labyrinth cooling). Subsequently the power reaches end users via the power grid. PV Dust supports 3 densities of energy-producing cloud, with commensurate levels of performance.

(a) Small Plant
Distance Between SPHELAR® Hosts: 3.125 meters
Total Number of Hosts: 175,770
Total Number of SPHELAR® Cells: 12.4m
Total Annual Energy Produced: 25,472,675 kWh/yr
Total Number of UAE 3-Bedroom Houses Powered: 5,095

(b) Medium Plant
Distance Between SPHELAR® Hosts: 2.5 meters
Total Number of Hosts: 297,693
Total Number of SPHELAR® Cells: 21m
Total Annual Energy Produced: 41,723,767 kWh/yr
Total Number of UAE 3-Bedroom Houses Powered: 8,345

(b) Large Plant
Distance Between SPHELAR® Hosts: 1.92 meters
Total Number of Hosts: 460,350
Total Number of SPHELAR® Cells: 32.5m
Total Annual Energy Produced: 63,821,598 kWh/yr
Total Number of UAE 3-Bedroom Houses Powered: 12,767

Public Visitors’ Centre
PV Dust will become a local landmark for residents and tourists. With no car parking provided, only public transport, visitors will board Masdar City LRT and alight at the heart of a lower ground complex of galleries, restaurants, and shops.

All retail and leisure amenities are laid out around deep patios that maximise the influx of daylight, while providing cool and shaded peripheral galleries.
Visitors will perceive the cloud of PV Dust from every corner of this lower ground complex. Should they wish to visit the installation itself, they can use the public stairs on either side of the LRT platforms to reach the ground floor and walk though the gravel pathways for a quick tour of PV Dust.

low-res version PDF of submitted boards

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