Seeking for reinterpretations: re-grounding solar energy

By moving away from the conventional interpretation of solar technology as a purely mechanical issue, the contribution seeks to explore and detect recent experimental practices that formulated new manners of integrating solar energy into the design process. Highlighting the potential of shifting the interpretation of these elements from alien, must-hidden and afterthought additions to emotional and cultural components, the presented projects delimited a new ground of intervention and evolution for solar energy. In fact, if nowadays we are confronting daily with an urban environment increasingly characterized by the formation of techno-natures, the very architectural discipline needs to formulate a new balance, embodying solar energy within the architectural body, interpreting its dispositifs as companions within the contemporary project, dispelling the idea that technology is cold and complicated, and defining technical solutions capable of becoming an integrated and aesthetically pleasing part of our living environment.