STARTING POINTS FOR A NEW CULTURAL VISION OF BIPV

摘要

The new regard of our contemporary culture for energy conservation is influencing the field of Architecture. Photovoltaics is now seen as a smart technology useful to transform buildings into "cool" contemporary energy generators. This new symbolic status of Photovoltaics is creating new architectural and market demands. This makes it more important to bridge the distance between Architecture and Photovoltaics by a better understanding. The paper represents a contribute to this need. The approach is historical and evolutionary. First a concise account of the past and present relationships between Architecture and Photovoltaics is given. Subsequently, a more detailed account of these relationships is given. The common thread is the effort to identify and clarify the architectural design demands for Photovoltaics. For the likely future evolution architectural images had been translated into technical descriptions, which can serve as starting points for new research in product development suiting the new architectural and market demands.