The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain may have solved the conundrum faced by many heritage buildings around the world. The iconic building recently completed the installation of a 80 kW photovoltaic system on its roof, consisting of 300 solar panels. For those that do manage to visit on a sunny day, however, the panels will be difficult to spot since they meld quite nicely with the rest of the design rather than sticking out.
As nations strive to reduce their carbon footprint worldwide, they have actively started deploying clean sources of energy. In addition to this, solar power has the unique advantage that it can be retrofitted into buildings, giving individual people and communities more control and choice over how they use energy. However, the problem comes when we try to apply it in heritage buildings. Going green is what we have to do, but when we place equipment such as solar panels it kills the view of the building which has been kept for hundreds of years trying to conserve it.
The Guggenheim Museum in Spain recently showed how the two can be balanced. Built in the last decade of the 20th century, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao incorporates modernism in its design and operations. Since 2019, the Museum has begun recording its carbon footprint and even making it public. Over the last few years, the Museum has also widened the scope of its carbon footprint calculations to include indirect emissions. In 2023, the Museum recorded a drop in its emissions over the previous years, and starting June this year, it has only purchased 100 percent renewable energy. As it looks to achieve net zero emissions by 2030, the Museum was looking for sustainable ways to meet the lighting needs of all its exhibits. While solar panels are the obvious choice for such an application, the challenge was incorporating them onsite with the Museum’s undulating form. The largest rooftops served as ideal sites for installation since the panels would remain out of view for visitors. Chromatically compliant solar panels were procured to ensure that the building’s architectural uniqueness was not disturbed.
An archaeological park in Pompeii, Italy, made news last year when it installed solar panels that resembled terracotta tiles. Such installations could serve as a model for other heritage buildings looking to go green but facing sharp opposition. Last year, the move to install solar panels on the roof of King’s College Chapel in Cambridge, UK, saw some stiff opposition. The installed panels are visible from the street and also contravene the Grade I listed buildings in the UK, which give the architecture special protection from any changes.
To facilitate the installation of energy-efficient technology, governments in European cities no longer require residents to seek permission to install it. For those interested in maintaining aesthetics, building-integrated photovoltaics (BPIV) is the go-to solution. An improvement from the transparent solar panel technology that was in vogue a few years ago, BIPV goes a step further by integrating solar cell technology in roof tiles, glass, slate, and much more to blend into existing structures while delivering modern-day technology.
This shows us that we are not necessarily at the crossroads of heritage and sustainability, where we need to choose one or the other. The two can go hand in hand. The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is a great example of that.