The International School in Copenhagen is using custom-built colorful solar panels as a featured architectural element. Each panel is individually angled and the result is really cool impression. The materials that were used in the new building are entirely natural. Thus the school made both an aesthetic and sustainable decision.
The campus of the cosy school is covered by 12,000 solar tiles making it the largest solar facade in the world. On sunny days the solar panels generate electricity that is contribute to the grid and to the school itself.
The solar panels are spanning over an area of 65,100ft2 and provide it with 300 MWh of electricity per year, meeting over half of the school's energy needs. One of the key vision of the school is to educate thair students of a sustainable world.
The unique building stands out because the panels are a distinctive sea green, the same of Copenhagen’s symbol - Andersen’ mermaid, which welcomes tourist in the Danish capital. Although no pigments were used to make them, the color comes from a process of light interference developed over more than a decade in the labs of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale in Lausanne (EPFL).
Based on a new technology developed in Switzerland the process that produced color of these panels is a similar to the effect seen in soap bubbles.
The researchers developed special filters, which they applied to the glass panels in nanometric layers. This filter determines which wavelengths of light will be reflected as visible color. The rest of the sunlight is absorbed by the solar panel and converted into energy.
“The iris effect creates a colorful rainbow on a very thin layer. We used the same principle and adapted for glass, said Jean-Louis Scartezzini, the head of the Solar Energy and Building Physics lab at EPFL.
The school building won the 2017 Iconic Award - an international award program for architecture and urban planning professionals in the architecture category.
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