The aesthetics of sustainability

"Permanence is a function of design. Design as beauty is essential to permanence. Committees are rarely formed to save eyesores. Design as function can assist in the goal of permanence by making maintenance easier. Design as beauty is the easiest to explain because everyone can think of an example. Builders for centuries have known this trick. Design it to be beautiful and the powerful will insure access to premium materials and labor. Build with good design, premium materials, and skilled labor, and the result is the Acropolis in Athens, the Vatican, or the Eiffel Tower. Apply this principle to a city and you get Paris, Prague, or Copenhagen. The only reason to restate such an obvious notion is that one cure for industrial waste must be permanent structures. No law has been found that says a powerplant, or sewage treatment plant, or waste recovery center must be ugly. Humanity must arrive at the conclusion that this is the only planet for light-years in any direction that will support human life. Structures necessary for human survival will be with us for a very long time and we are going to have to look at them. They may as well be beautiful."

Elegant Technology pp. 121-122  (first written 1986)

Aesthetic Energy Autobahns

Can Designer Power Masts Win Over the Public?

By Christina Schmidt   05/11/2011 

Excellent photos by Bystrup Architects

Europe is undergoing a revolution in energy production that requires massive new infrastructure to support the shift to renewables. But do new power lines always have to result in blight? Some utility companies are hoping that designer power masts can help overcome local opposition.

Erik Bystrup gets enthusiastic when the talk turns to power transmission masts. Standing in front of one of his masts, the Danish architect uses words like "elegance" and "beauty" and talks about how pleased he is that transmission masts are finally no longer dotting the landscape like "giant sad men."

There is a simple reason behind Bystrup's passionate words: His masts are not ordinary steel structures but art. To improve the Danes' acceptance of the poles, which are visible at great distances, the architect designed modern masts that look like abstract crowns or eagles' wings.

Bystrup is proud that he can count himself among the pioneers of a new aesthetic of the power transmission mast. Some 500 of his winged masts will soon mark a 166-kilometer (103-mile) section of power lines in Denmark's Jutland region. The architect rhapsodizes over the steel poles, saying the way they reflect sunlight will make them "almost invisible."

Invisibility is a characteristic many citizens would like see applied to power lines. Because of the massive shift to renewable energies currently being planned, thousands of kilometers of new, high-voltage power lines will have to be installed throughout Europe in the coming years, a prospect that generates very little enthusiasm across the continent. The masts will be used to transport electricity fromoffshore windparks off the North and Baltic seas as well as saved energy from batteries in Norway in Northern Europe as well as power from giant solar energy facilities in North Africa to consumers across the continent. But the networks of steel cable, which are about 60 meters (197 feet) high, are a blight on the landscape and are surrounded by electromagnetic fields, triggering public campaigns against them in many European countries. In Germany, the public debate is beginning in earnest following plans by Chanceller Angela Merkel to back away from her government's initial move to extend the lifelines of nuclear plants and to now likely retreat from atomic energy entirely.

Design against NIMBY Lawsuits

With a whole slew of not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) lawsuits planned against the construction of so-called new energy autobahns in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, grid operators in many places are now deploying a new weapon in the fight against this concentrated resistance: the power of beauty. In the Finnish city of Jyväskylä, transmission masts are no longer just unadorned metal poles. Instead, yellow, looped Y-shaped masts stretch into the sky. When they are illuminated at night, they convey the message of green electricity. In Iceland, dramatic designs could lead to masts in the future that take the shape of human statues. Because of the way they are designed, they can even be adjusted to suit their environment, so that, for example, they look like people climbing up a hill.

The electric utilities can already report their first successes. Bystrup's crown-shaped masts in northern Denmark are the result of a contest the Danish grid operator Energinet.dk announced about 10 years ago. To gain approval for a new transmission route, the company enticed local residents and their political representatives with the idea of using less conspicuous designer masts. "Politicians took up the idea and then told us it was a requirement," says Energinet.dk manager Christian Jensen. It was a horse trade that apparently brought reconciliation into the political debate. Today, local residents fondly refer to the transmission masts as "magic wands," an allusion to their shape.

But it isn't everywhere that citizens meekly succumb to the charm of the spruced up masts, which, at the end of the day, are still masts, as the Dutch grid operator Tennet experienced. Its proposal to replace the standard steel poles with double masts consisting of two asparagus-shaped poles encountered little approval. "We want underground lines instead of dangerous masts. A new exterior doesn't change that," says Harry van der Weij, one of the protesting citizens.

'Our Projects Are Still in Their Infancy'

In other European countries, the conflict over power transmission masts as art is in full swing. In Germany, on the other hand, which likes to see itself as a pioneer of future-oriented energy technology, there are no masts shaped like asparagus, crowns or wings to be seen. "Our projects are still in their infancy," says Wilfried Fischer, manager of major projects with the eastern German grid operator 50Hertz. The traditional grid-shaped mast is so superior in terms of solidity and economic efficiency, says Fischer, that the only word he can think of to describe them is "optimal." more