Marjan van Aubel
Marjan van Aubel is a Dutch solar designer known for work that asks a simple but radical question: why does solar energy have to be ugly? Through product innovations, immersive light installations, and architecture, her studio designs for a positive future. She is combining sustainability, design, and technology to make solar energy part of everyday life.
Her work is held in the permanent collections of MoMA in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the V&A in London, the Vitra Design Museum and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. She co-founded the Solar Biennale and is the author of “Solar Futures: How to Design a Post-Fossil World with the Sun”.
Talk: Solar Futures
Solar design is more than a discipline. It is a new movement that revolves around designing with the sun. It shifts the narrative from solar being purely technical to a seamlessly integrated and beautiful part of our daily lives. It blends creativity, sustainability, and reverence for the sun and its abundant energy.
Solar design, a term started by Marjan van Aubel herself, envisions a world where solar integration is essential, not just a technical aspect added later. Instead, it should be the starting point – the foundation of the design process. It is believed that in the future, an object or building will be considered broken if it does not generate its own energy. How can we seamlessly integrate solar power into daily life while embracing aesthetics, interaction, and cultural values? How can we use this technology to create something beautiful that enriches our environment and the way we live together?
In her talk, Marjan van Aubel will give a historical overview of how we used to live and design with the sun, what we can learn from this and how to design a post-fossil future with the sun. Through examples of her work – Sunne, a self-powered solar light that mimics the sun, Ra, a solar tapestry, or the Solar Pavilion, a solar mesh on an architectural scale – van Aubel will inspire and provoke you to see solar energy in a new light.
