A Brick That Powers Your Building?

It sounds far-fetched, but it could be a real possibility in the future and it came out of the BrickStainable Design Competition. Last post I told you about my trip to New Mexico to meet with one of last year’s winners, Eric Haskins to discuss an idea he had. Well now I can talk about it because his idea for photovoltaic brick is patent-pending. Several entries in the BrickStainable competition utilized this concept—marrying clay brick with new photovoltaic technology—and Eric is taking it to the next level. Obviously, this idea is in its infancy—much research is still needed to figure out exactly how it could and would be used on the exterior and link to the building’s systems on the interior. Still, through this competition, architects interested in product development are working on the innovative ideas they explored in theory in their entries, in the real world. BrickStainable could lead to energy efficient systems far beyond anything we imagined when we began this competition and to me there’s nothing more exciting!