Solar Umbrella house - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Solar Umbrella House is a private residence in Venice, California, remodeled using active

Active solar

Active solar technologies are employed to convert solar energy into another more useful form of energy. This would normally be a conversion to heat or electrical energy. Inside a building this energy would be used for heating, cooling, or off-setting other energy use or costs. Active solar uses...

and passive

Passive solar building design

In passive solar building design, windows, walls, and floors are made to collect, store, and distribute solar energy in the form of heat in the winter and reject solar heat in the summer...

solar design strategies to enable the house to function independent of the electrical grid. The design was inspired by Paul Rudolph’s Umbrella House and Heyward Apartments of 1953. Originally a small 650 sq ft (60.4 m²) bungalow, the owners added 1150 sq ft (106.8 m²) in 2005, remodeling it in such a way that the house is almost 100% energy neutral

Energy Neutral Design

An Energy Neutral Design is a Design of any type that has the environment and low energy consumption practices in mind during all stages of planning and production.-Examples:...

The building

Inspired by Paul Rudolph

Paul Rudolph (architect)

Paul Marvin Rudolph was an American architect and the dean of the Yale School of Architecture for six years, known for use of concrete and highly complex floor plans...

's Umbrella House of 1953, the Solar Umbrella House produces 95% of its electricity from solar energy.(Solar Umbrella Movie Clip) The American Institute of Architects listed it as a top-ten green project for 2006. Designed by award-winning architects Lawrence Scarpa

Lawrence Scarpa

Lawrence Scarpa is an architect based in Los Angeles, California.He is known for the creative use of conventional materials in unique and unexpected ways...

and Angela Brooks of the architecture firm Brooks + Scarpa

Brooks + Scarpa

Brooks + Scarpa is an architectural firm formed in 2010 by Lawrence Scarpa and Angela Brooks who worked together as principals at Pugh + Scarpa for more than a decade...

. , The Solar Umbrella House establishes a precedent for the next generation of California modernist architecture. Passive and active solar design strategies render the residence nearly 100% energy neutral.
The first thing you think-when you park outside the Solar Umbrella is "This cannot be a house or a building of any kind”. There appear to be no walls, no windows, no roof only for anthracite-black panels, as slender as playing cards and seemingly as weightless, laid delicately on the top edges of a pair of concrete pillars soaring 25 feet (7.6 m) into the air”. You see right through it. The other houses on Woodlawn Avenue are teens bungalows and 20s Spanish Colonial Revivals: four walls clad in wood or stucco, anchored to the street by low-slung roofs and sturdy front porches. This wafer-thin superstructure is something else altogether-more air than building. Barely touching the ground, the Scarpa-Brooks house, designed by the husband-and-wife architects, is a kite among stegosaurs.
Richard Koshalek, former President of Art Center College in Pasadena and current Director of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC, considers Solar Umbrella an important house at a critical time. “A new generation of architects is intent on environmentally sustainable designs,” he said, “and Mr. Scarpa and Ms. Brooks-along with Thom Mayne

Thom Mayne

Thom Mayne is a Los Angeles-based architect. Educated at University of Southern California and the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 1978, Mayne helped found the Southern California Institute of Architecture in 1972, where he is a trustee...

and others-are at the forefront of this optimistic trend.”
The Solar Umbrella House is an extension of an initial remodel of a 1920s bungalow. Conserving the original form of the bungalow, Scarpa and Brooks took advantage of the "through lot" condition of the site, reversing the front and back of the house. This strategy allows the house to gain its needed southern exposure for the solar array while also connecting the living area with the back garden space. The result is a contrasting expression with the entry facade of the solar array facing one street, and the more quiet and modest original structure facing the other street.

The organizing principles of the house hinge on the blurring and extension of inside to outside, such strategies create dynamic ways to experience and incorporate the entire environment. A simple but elegant concrete swimming pool cascades along the garden's western edge, linking the outdoor garden to the house. The living room has large sliding glass doors that open out onto the garden, literally erasing the boundary of inside and out. The canopy of solar panels provides a covered space from which the garden below can be viewed from the second floor.

Environmental Aspects

Scarpa and Brooks have defined their careers by integrating high style with sustainability

Sustainability

Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of union, an interdependent relationship and mutual responsible position with all living and non...

.
Passively adapted to the temperate-arid climate of southern California, the major design feature of the Solar Umbrella is a shading solar canopy. Rather than deflecting sunlight, this contemporary solar canopy uses 89 amorphous photovoltaic panels to transform the sunlight into usable energy, providing 95% of the residence's electricity. At the same time, it screens large portions of the structure from direct exposure to the intense southern California sun, protecting the body of the building from thermal heat gain. A net meter provided by the City of Los Angeles connects the photovoltaic array to the grid, eliminating both the need for a storage system and the time-of-use charges associated with traditional electricity use.

An integrated solar heating system supplies heat through the concrete floors of the new addition. Three solar hot-water panels preheat the domestic hot water, and a fourth heats the swimming pool. The home's daylit interior requires no electric lighting on sunny days. The house is outfitted with energy-efficient appliances and both interior and exterior lighting-control systems. Materials were selected based on their effects on the environment and indoor air quality.

Awards and honors

AIA Los Angeles Chapter, Special "Decade Award" in 2007

National AIA Honor Awards for Architecture in 2007

National AIA/COTE Top Ten Green Projects in 2006

National AIA Housing PIA Award in 2006; Category: Innovation in Housing Design

Record Houses, Architectural Record in 2005

AIA Design Award, California Chapter in 2005

Building Design & Construction Magazine Design Award in 2005

AIA Los Angeles Chapter Design Award in 2005

External links

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