Wind Screen by Meejin Yoon, Associate Professor of Architecture
Location:  Green Building 
Installation: Installed April 2011

 

Imagine a shimmering curtain of light suspended in the archway below the Green Building: an architectural-scale screen of micro-turbines that simultaneously generates and consumes energy harvested from the wind, translating wind speed into a visual register of this replenishable source of energy.  Air currents sweeping across the plaza create kinetic patterns of form and light, illuminating what otherwise would be a largely invisible phenomenon.  As the wind blows stronger, and the turbines spin faster, the lights shine more brightly; energy is consumed as soon as it is produced, always balancing the equation.