By Ute Poerschke, Penn State
Building on the success of last fall’s wind energy symposium, the Stuckeman School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture is hosting the Wind Turbine Integration in Architecture and the Urban Environment exhibition in the Willard G. Rouse III Gallery, Stuckeman Family Building, through Oct. 7.
Since the spring of 2010, an interdisciplinary team of Penn State researchers and instructors from the departments of Architecture, Architectural Engineering, Landscape Architecture, and Aerospace Engineering have collaborated in researching building-integrated wind energy (BIWE).
Harvesting wind energy through the use of wind turbines is highly relevant in the sustainable fulfillment of the country’s energy demands, as it lessens the dependence on fossil fuels and decreases greenhouse emissions. The exhibition provides an overview of a project that investigates the integration of wind turbines by combining research on wind behavior around buildings and in the urban environment with design investigations of wind-optimized building forms and the aesthetic potential of incorporating turbines into architecture. Combining technical, environmental and aesthetic research and design studies, the project forms a testing ground for new architectural strategies, in which the implementation of wind turbines is closely linked to a building and its built surrounding.
The exhibition is funded by the Penn State Institute of Energy and the Environment (PSIEE) Sustainability Seed Grant Program, the Raymond A. Bowers Program for Excellence in Design and Construction of the Built Environment, and the Stuckeman Collaborative Design Research Fund.
The exhibition has been organized by Ute Poerschke, associate professor of architecture, and Malcolm Woollen, assistant professor of architecture. The research team also includes Jelena Srebric, associate professor of architectural engineering; Susan Stewart, research associate of architectural engineering and aerospace engineering; and Timothy Murtha, associate professor of landscape architecture.