olar panels are no longer just silver boxes on roofs. A new generation of solar cells harnesses solar energy through flexible, colored or even transparent surfaces, creating endless possibilities for innovation at the crossroads of design, engineering and architecture. An energy-producing portable speaker, public park furniture that glows at night, a sensor-based mailbox that sends SMS when full and a refrigerator that can keep itself cool off the grid. In Sunny Memories, four leading design schools explored the broad new realm of technology, energy, and design that solar dye cells have heralded. Led by the EPFL+ECAL Lab, in Lausanne, Switzerland, the “Sunny Memories” workshops took place in collaboration with the University of Art and Design Lausanne (ECAL), the California College of the Arts (CCA), the Royal College of Art in London (RCA) and the Ecole Nationale Superieure de Creation Industrielle in Paris (ENSCI). Under the tutelage of design leaders like Yves Behar from San Francisco’s fuseproject, Jean-Francois Dingjian of Paris’ Normal Studio, Sam Hecht from London’s Industrial Facility, and Swiss designer Jörg Boner, students began their projects with the following challenge: how do we use energy to record our memory, heritage and knowledge? How can we employ solar energy to pre serve history, while increasing autonomy, mobility, and sustainability?
