Thursday Salute to Originals: Productive Urban Furniture
Have you ever considered the benefits of solar power? Clean, renewable energy has direct positive implications in our health, our environment, and our climate. Solar farms are being created in several parts of the planet, such as the solar farm in North Carolina built by Apple pictured below. In the company’s efforts to power all of its data centers with renewable energy, hundreds of acres of land are populated with solar technology.
But while the purposes of these installations are something that is deeply beautiful and marks the prominence of the new ‘green’ era, we can’t help but wonder when we will see solar panels and the promotion of alternative sources of energy in a more public faculty.
The team at City_Index destroys the typical notion of a sprawling solar farm by exploding it into small pieces and scattering throughout the city. Their ‘Aktina’ project is one of the first to develop public accessible stand-alone power stations (through solar panels) located in an urban setting. Located in Elefsina, Greece, the station collects solar energy and can be used to recharge a multitude of devices from electric bicycles to handheld devices.
The Aktina installation is a response to alternative mobility and the vision of new productive furniture within the urban environment. Could this be a glimpse of what ‘gas’ stations for electric cars could become? Aktina, specifically, is a completely self-sustained information and Wi-Fi hub that adds a touchpoint of technology to an otherwise plain industrial streetscape.
We salute the Aktina design team for their consideration of the streetscape in conjunction with the environment. Corporations could use these hip, urban, modular, individualized concepts to inspire their imagining of what renewable energy can mean to future generations.
Image credits: Cult of Mac, My Design Stories