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Energy-Generating Illuminated Pyramids Spring Up From The Sands of Abu Dhabi

The Lunar Cubit is a public art project that aims to demonstrate that sustainable design and engineering can also be beautiful.

Here’s a forward-thinking public art project that we can really get behind: the Lunar Cubit is an energy-generating installation that could power not just its own illuminated surface, but as many as 250 nearby homes as well. The project was recently awarded first prize in the Land Art Generator Initiative’s first international design competition held in the UAE. The project proposal, which has yet to be financed and green-lit, would construct the set of nine pyramids in the UAE capital of Abu Dhabi, outside Masdar City an urban center which, once completed, will be “the world’s first zero-carbon metropolis.”

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The installation is designed as a monthly calendar and sun-dial, drawing from ancient Islamic astronomical traditions. It consists of nine sleek, black pyramid structures made of glass and amorphous silicon, giving the appearance of onyx polished to a mirror finish, as well as frameless solar panels that capture the sun’s energy during the day, then use it to illuminate the sculptures at night with low energy LED lighting. One large pyramid rests in the center, encircled by eight smaller pyramids representing the eight different stages of the lunar cycle.

Here’s how the designers explain it:
Designed with proportions matching the Great Pyramid at Giza and scaled using Royal Cubits, the earliest attested standard of measure; eight pyramids each 42 Royal Cubits high (22meters) form a ring around a central pyramid 96 Royal Cubits high (50 meters). Each of the eight smaller pyramids represents one of the eight lunar phases. Starting at North and rotating counter clockwise, following the orbit of the moon, they are; New, Waxing Crescent, First Quarter, Waxing Gibbous, Full, Waning Gibbous, Third Quarter, Waning Crescent. Each night the central pyramid will always illuminate inversely to the lunar cycle. Pyramids forming the ring also illuminate inversely but are lit only when their corresponding moon phase is active, orbiting around the central pyramid like the moon orbits around earth.

We’re excited to see artists and engineers working to produce public artworks that address issues of climate change. Projects like the Lunar Cubit help establish an important personal, tangible connection with sustainable design—where else could visitors literally reach out and touch a 1.74MW utility scale power plant, albeit in the form of nine monolithic pyramids rising from the sands of Abu Dhabi?

[via designboom.com]