An exhibition designed to provide an overview of a Penn State research and design project investigating the integration of wind turbines in architecture and the urban environment is scheduled to run from Aug. 22 to Oct. 7, 2011, in the Willard G. Rouse III Gallery at the Stuckeman Family Building on the University Park campus.
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. The project's primary objective has been to combine 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 the building and its surrounding.
The exhibition is funded by the Penn State Institutes 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 research team consists of professors Ute Poerschke and Malcolm Woollen, Department of Architecture; Jelena Srebric, Department of Architectural Engineering; Susan Stewart, departments of Architectural Engineering and Aerospace Engineering; and Timothy Murtha, Department of Landscape Architecture.
For more information, contact Ute Poerschke at uxp10@psu.edu.