Solar powered bus shelter proposal unveiled at Loyola

Eco-consciousness and design met at Concordia on Monday June 12 for the Collaboratoire Exhibition of the winning designs of the Loyola Solar Powered Bus Shelter competition.

The 2016 student design competition was organized by Collaboratoire, a research project initiated by the University Chair in Integrated Design Ecology and Sustainability for the Built Environment (IDEAS-BE), in partnership with Concordia’s Centre for Zero Energy Building Studies.

“This is a design challenge that seeks to join eco-awareness to design and art,” said Carmela Cucuzzella, responsible of the Collaboratoire initiative and organizer of the competition. “This is a very important pairing because it allows a community to become aware through ways that focus on optimism and delight, as opposed to the message of a catastrophic future.”

The competition first launched in April 2016, and attracted 26 proposals from over six different countries. “This was our first design challenge with an international scope! The reach was quite impressive considering we were still working on building our social networks,” said Cucuzzella. The winning projects were announced on June 30, 2016.

'A new learning eco-system'

The idea for the competition first came in the fall of 2015, through discussions between Cucuzzella, and Andreas Athienitis, the director of Concordia’s Centre for Zero Energy Building Studies. Building a new shelter that integrates the most advanced solar technologies while also expanding the bus shelter space to accommodate various other academic-community activities was at the core of this discussion.

“The idea of this new expanded solar powered shelter was to build a new learning eco-system for both our students and community”, said Cucuzzella.

While the winning design for bus shelter was not able to be built on Loyola campus in time for Montreal’s 375th, Athienitis had some good news to share about the building process.

“We received a grant for the technical side of the project. This includes getting panels, other materials, completing detailed designs. The grant is from the Trottier Foundation, and it will cover a large part of the costs to actually produce the shelter on Loyola Campus,” said Athienitis.

The exposition featured a large interactive model of the winning proposed project, as well as various pop-up boards presenting pictures, analysis and explanations of the other winning projects and of the initiative itself. Some members of the first prize winning team were present to reveal the model, and discuss their shelter more in depth for the attendees.

'A choreography between the lights and body movements'

The winning team, Team 35, is composed of Olivier Guertin, Claude Amiot-bédard, Paul Desharnais, Julien Duchesne, Vincent Cloutier Laplante and Philippe Côté.

“We are two architects, two industrial designers, and two electrical engineers,” said Guertin, one of the architects from Team 35. “It’s fun because we really learned a lot from one discipline to the next,” he added.

The team’s project consists of a large roof supported by columns. The roof and columns integrates solar technology inside the different components. This way, the technology is more than practical, but actually functions with design and art in mind.

“The designers worked on a choreography between the lights and body movements in the bus shelter. So, when people move inside, the light changes colour,” explained Guertin. “So it’s also a way to raise awareness. It’s hard to put on a human scale what it means to consume 50 watts.”

You can find out more about the Collaboratoire project and the winning teams by visiting IDEAS-BE’s website (www.ideas-be.ca).