PROJECT: Solar Wave
CATEGORY: Architecture
TYPE: Urban Planning
LOCATION: Zhejiang, China

Solar Wave is a project that attempts to promote eco-friendly tourism through the use of sustainable technology. It represents an experimental investigation in urbanism and embraces technology in a similar way that the generation of Buckminster Fuller, Archigram, Constant, and the Situationists had envisioned – in terms of systems, connections, environments, and sensations.

The project consists of 5,600 m2 of hexagon-shaped photovoltaic panels suspended over the coastal water of Gouqi island, generating enough electricity for the entire island. It is an intervention that tries to dematerialize architecture, through the artificial conditioning of natural elements such as sunlight and water. Solar Wave is conceived without a definitive skin around its exterior, subjected to the natural forces of wind and water. As a result the building appears to be massless and formless, an architectural metaphor like a tidal wave.