(1) Energy Efforts

Chapter Six.  Energy Efforts

When I was attending college in San Luis Obispo I actually had 

occasion to visit one of the big solar farms built there much earlier

in the century.  They were vast facilities, consisting of what seemed

miles of solar panels.  So upon return to San Diego and my 

architectural firm, I had anticipated maybe helping design such

a large solar farm out in the back country.  But that wasn't to be.

Large solar farms in the area were pretty much a thing of the past,

especially since the local Indian tribes had put their foot down 

about these massive solar farms encroaching their sacred lands.

Rather, the next step in solar farming was that of designing all 

sorts of buildings with rooftop solar farms.  These roofs were 

different from the photovoltaic roofs that I had worked on earlier.  

Rather, numerous solar panels encompassed most of a given 

building's roof area.  However, it wasn't only a matter of layout--it 

was also about the design of the building itself.  So for about a 

year I was assigned to help with the design of such buildings to 

be built in downtown San Diego.

What was interesting was not only the *production* of energy, 

but also the *reduction* of energy.  In other words, these new

buildings also required a natural cooling system in addition to

air-conditioning which used up energy.  

While working in this area I thought of my college years when

I spent some time in Vancouver, Canada studying the great

conference building  there, noting its great rooftop park that 

even harbored small wildlife.  Of course the large extension to 

the San Diego Convention Center many years ago followed 

along these same lines with a pleasant park built on its roof.

But these current building roofs had no room for roof gardens,

so natural shading material had to be built into the buildings

themselves.  I remembered coming across an architectural

photo of some really early buildings in Athens, Greece that

showed great showers of vines streaming down the entire

length of  these tall structures.  Also, there was the well-known

Tree Towers of Milan, Italy.  Talking to some other architects in 

my office, I wondered how we might follow the same couse.  

We decided to design selected floors to harbor gardens of

hanging vines as well as small trees that could sprout out of

balconies, grow fast, and cover large portions of the building.  

Such could provide shade and natural cooling, as well as 

beautify.  Happily the idea "took," and over the years San Diego 

saw a wonderful forest of these kind of buildings.