Architecture of new energy sites

Aside from the clear human health implications of coal plants and natural gas stations, the architecture of energy infrastructure has traditionally been driven by raw economy and feasibility, with isolated locations creating little need for architectural beauty. However, modern ideological and urban shifts are powering a new approach.

What brings the architects and environmental engineering team together is a sense of shared responsibility: a need to be lean, clean, and green. Transporting energy across long distances is often inefficient, resulting in curtailments or caps where energy is not transferred at all.

Across the world today, energy infrastructure is lighting up architectural imaginations, fueling a new typology that merges a continuing need for efficiency and economy with architectural considerations that respond to a variety of contexts, whether it be urban or rural, built or natural, occupant or visitor.

And yet, the pervasiveness of energy systems, or better still plant systems—unquestionably late from a cultural point of view—raises contrasts and debates, being an added and superstructural element which rarely integrates successfully.

Below, we highlight ten examples of how architects and designers have used energy plants as an artistic platform to celebrate, and instigate, a greener future. Hydropower Plant Ragn d'Err / Vincenzo Cangemi Architectes. Image © Ralph Feiner

Energy self-sufficient houses were conceived to be supported by natural resources; wind power generates electricity for lighting; sea-water deliveries allow drinking water to be distilled in solar stills; and anaerobic generators digest household waste to create methane gas for cooking.