Eco Factor: Sustainable hotel proposal designed to be powered by renewable sources of energy.
The brainchild of architect and designer Michael Jantzen, the Solar Winds Desert Hotel is a conceptual design for a large luxury eco hotel that is powered by solar and wind energy. With 140 rooms, the hotel design is symbolically evolved from thoughts about certain desert plants and how they function in hot dry climate.
The symbolic leaves of the Solar Winds Desert Hotel would shade various facilities at the base such as restaurants, a gym, a pool, a spa, retail spaces and offices. These leaves will generate power for the rest of the hotel through a coating on their surface made using spray-on solar cells, which allow any surface exposed to sunlight to generate renewable electricity.
The stem of the structure becomes the space in which the hotel rooms are located. At the top of the hotel is mounted a large fully integrated vertical axis wind turbine, which would also generate large amounts of electricity for the hotel. Various natural cooling strategies will be incorporated into the design of the hotel, including the installation of earth pipes buried deep in the desert below the hotel.
As the wind blows over the top of the center portion of the structure, earth cooled air from below is pulled up through the hotel’s interior space. In addition, all of the windows in the hotel are shaded and overhangs are built into the structure. The designer hopes that projects like this will help demonstrate the inclusion of alternative energy gathering strategies into the design of high end luxury facilities and can point a way toward a new and exciting aesthetic for a greener tomorrow.
All images © Michael Jantzen [Used with permission]
Thanks: [Michael Jantzen]
