SolarLab Main Office
Industrivej 8,
DK-8260 Viby J
+45 6017 8031
info@solarlab.dk

SolarLab Copenhagen
Snaregade 12
DK-1205 København K

SolarLab North America
370 Jay Street, floor 7
Brooklyn, NY-11201, USA
+1 (888) 995-7822
info@SolarLab-NorthAmerica.com

CVR 34720975

Designing your own

Rain-screens, Curtain-walls or Louvers?

3 solar facade typologies

Why solar facades from SolarLab?

As the owner we help you by providing:
  • Premium facade adds value opportunity
  • Positive RoI – environmentally and financially
  • Low maintenance and long life
  • System warranty from single supplier
  • 100% recyclable and ready for a circular economy
  • High profile sustainability contribution
  • Long and deep experience with solar & BIPV
As the architect we support you with:
  • Unparalleled design freedom
    • Color, finish & texture
    • Panelisation & mounting geometry
  • Non-fading, resilient, durable & low-maintenance facade
  • Cost-effective path to ZEB-COM & NET-ZERO
  • Rain-screen, curtain-wall & Louvers
  • Free design & scoping support
  • Free CAD tools for Rhino, Revit and SketchUp
As the installer we assist you with:
  • Proven, tested and certified facade system
  • Modular system that is easy to work with
  • Low weight & easy assembly for fast installation
  • Rugged and known technology
  • Installation & commissioning guides and support
  • In-house design, engineering and production
  • Complete system package with documentation

Mounting systems

The highly resilient tempered glass outer skin support 3 primary styles of facade finish. From the super smooth Crystal finish over the Etched mat surface to the Deep-Structured rolled glass, they afford very different material experiences and play of light. This allows individual architectural interpretation and integration of the custom design solar facade to seamlessly achieve the desired outcome.

Shingles

The overlapping panels of the Scales family provides a depth to the facade and a texture that add life and character to the panelisation. With build heights as low as 80 mm this ventilated cladding solution can be customized both in dimensions and articulation.

First deployed at the Red River College in Winnipeg where the large panels softly changes color as they flow around the buildings. Leveraging a range of panel sizes up to 2400 by 1400 mm, and tiled in clusters this allows the highly efficient solar facade to seamlessly integrate in the building design by providing both human and building scale element without dominating the resulting implementation.

Sequins

The randomly and individually articulated panels of the Sequins family provide a lively and highly expressive facade cladding that continuously change with the daylight and the viewer. The subtlety of these color changes can be tailored, as can the dimensions of the individual panels to fit the desired building design.

The system was first deployed at the Copenhagen International School where the 12.000 identical panels never look the same due to the anisotropic nature of the glass coatings and the panel geometry. These dramatic visual impressions allows the building to articulate and highlights the sustainable efforts and shows that taking responsibility can be both beautiful and cost-effective.

Skin

The smooth flat mounted Skin family allows for build heights as low as 60 mm and for seamless integrations with traditional cladding solutions to provide a more monolithic and unified architectural form. This family lends itself very easily to energy renovations where the low profile along with the cost-efficient panelization allows solar facade integration without compromising the original architectural design.

First deployed at the Bornholm hospital and the Trifolium projects in Denmark it can be mounted directly unto the insulating layer to further reduce complexity, build height and cost.

Surface finishing

The highly resilient tempered glass outer skin support 3 primary styles of surface finishing. Front the super smooth Crystal finish over the Etched mat surface to the Deep-Structured rolled glass, they afford very different material experiences and allows architectural interpretation and integration of the custom design solar facade to seamlessly achieve the desired outcome.

Satin

The Satin finish is our most popular and highly recommended panel finish, as it allows for a self-cleaning and maintenance free facade while it all but eliminates glare and can therefore be deployed in airports and close to traffic. A further advantage of the smooth satinated finish is its well documented ability to harvest more electricity from the sun than traditional PV glass.

Crystal

Our Crystal finish provides a dramatic and beautifully precise visual character that lifts it out of the mundane to tell a story of high-tech and futurism. It also allows the solar facade integration into curtain wall facades without noticeable differentiation to the material expression.

Texture

To give the surface more depth and character we also have a range of deep-structured glasses that not only adds a macro level play of light and tactile textures, but also enhances the light gathering ability of the panel like the satinated glass finish does.

Colors and color technologies

To provide a maintenance free and long service life  facade, we integrate color behind the tempered low-iron glass where it is protected from the suns UV rays, but also use polymer free coloring system to ensure color stability for the entire life of the facade

From the natural material colors and classic ceramic frits to the structural colores created through PVD coating we provide a comprehensive range of coloring technologies to provide flat, metallic or chameleon style colors.

Natural

The supreme clarity of the ultra low-iron float glass defines the most efficient glass available, with crisp reflections, but also a higher risc of glare and disturbing reflections.

The natural float glass allows visibility to the photo voltaic cells that adds an intriguing visual detail to the facade as the PV cells can be visible in un textures glass, while our wide range of structured and finished glass will add macro-level details that sculpt reflections as well as optimize light harvesting.

Ceramic-like

Structural color coatings with a uniform and non-iridescent sheen comparable to a ceramic or painted finish. Applied to the rear of the glass and available in almost any defined color, these coating affords very broad design freedom and combined with various glass finishings they can provide mat stone like as well as glazed ceramic like claddings.

The colors are mostly as efficient as our other structural colors, but certain hues such as bright yellows or bright reds may have a slightly lower efficiency

Metal-like

Structural color coatings provide a unique metallic like character with unparalleled efficiency and uniquely beautiful colors. Through a multiple nano-scale layers it filters and reflects very specific wavelengths of light as color, but lets most of the light pass thru to be harvested by the PV cells.

The coatings are available in a limited range of colors and are often anisotropic in nature and may change hue slightly depending the position of the sun, to create a dynamic facade experience that will never fade and provide material expression comparable to anodized or polished aluminum.

Solar facades designed to be customized

We hope the design freedom afforded will help you design amazing sustainable architecture and can’t wait to help you realize it, so please reach out if you have any question or would like a AIA CEU or CPD session. Presented at your office or remotely via Zoom or Teams.

AIA CEU logo
Cladding systems

Download

To help you get started designing your energy producing solar facade we provide our design guide for both panelisation and solar rain-screen construction. As our systems provide very broad design freedom we have provided a detailed plan and section sketch, with minimum and maximum dimensions as well as typical dimension and description.

To help you in the early concept design phase we have created a dynamic BIM component for SketchUp that will automatically panelize your solar facade and add BIM data to to your 3D design. Simply import our solar wall component and scale it to fit your design intent. In the object dialog you can select color, panel sizes and tilt angle. The the wall will update automatically.

Download our free CAD tools

Please download our BIM tools for Revit, Rhino3D and SketchUp (ArchiCad will be available soon) to help you design and optimize your custom solar rain-screens. The various downloads include usage guides for installation, design and export to get you started.

The results can be rendered with our standard metallic-like colors already included i the tools (or any color you like if non-metallic) and if you share your creation with us along with context and location we can provide project specific visualizations and preliminary estimates of both power generation and project cost.

If you are still in concept phase and not ready to detail the facades just yet, you are also welcome to share your 3D massing or basic envelope model for a free simulation and design feedback.

We also provide descriptive texts for your documentation to ensure that the design intent is realised.