Grow and Solar Ivy are solar and wind energy storage systems for walls by Smit (USA), 2007
The Grow project (still in the prototyping stage) is a solar and wind energy storage system used as cladding for exterior walls.
Inspired by nature in form and function, the panels making up the system are laid over the surface like ivy leaves, generating energy even while defining new formal and typological aspects.
The Grow project, originally a graduating thesis in Industrial Design by Samuel Cabot Cochran of the Pratt Institute, exhibited in the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition at MoMa in New York, is based on a system made up of modular bricks.
Each brick incorporates 5 tiny solar panels (capable of producing photovoltaic energy) with a piezo-generator at the base to exploit the motion caused by the wind and produce wind energy.
These flexible, fluctuating leaves are made with conductive ink printed on 100% recycled polyethylene and encapsulated in sheets of Tefzel DuPont (modified ETFE or ethylene-tetrafluoroethylene), a plastic material offering high resistance to corrosion.
As the project evolved, the leaves of Solar Ivy were anchored to a stainless steel grid originally designed to permit climbing plants – real ones – to cover the walls of buildings without damaging them. The leaves are different in size from the original version and are not in blocks of 5 but are assembled individually to produce solar energy alone, as the system for exploiting the motion of the wind is no longer present.
The system’s modular structure makes it adaptable to all kinds of buildings and easy to replace: every individual "leaf" can in fact be removed if it breaks without interrupting the functioning of the system as a whole.
Analysis of the product life cycle (LCA), use of recycled and regenerated materials wherever possible and reduced bulk allow Grow and Solar Ivy to be recycled and recovered at the end of their life cycle, further reducing environmental impact.
In addition to its presentation at the New York exhibition, the project has already received numerous acknowledgements and publications and is included in the Ecodesign collection edited by Silvia Barbero and Brunella Cozzo and published by h.f. Ullmann.
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