HOME: Solar-Powered Lamp
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Project Description
Questioning the comprehension of the place we call home, HOME is a transdisciplinary project investigating climate change’s causes, effects, and solutions for sustainable future development. The project proposes a solar-powered LED lamp designed for everyday use, to introduce solar technology in the domestic routine of contemporary dwellings, raising awareness and fostering the future use of clean sources to cut emissions endangering human life on our home planet, the Earth.
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Urban or rural issues
Physical or other transformations
EU Programme or fund
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Description of the project
Summary
What is home? According to the literal definition, home is the place where one lives permanently especially as a member of a family or household, but when we think about where we live — our home addresses — we often ignore several lines in the format. As result of collective human achievements, we are discovering more about the universe and our place in it. This cosmic consciousness allows us to enrich the formula of our addresses with additional lines that are common to all humankind: Earth, Solar System, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Galactic Group, Virgo Supercluster, Observable Universe, and furthermore still to discover.
On 14 February 1990, when Voyager 1 the spacecraft was departing our planetary neighborhood, Carl Sagan asked NASA to turn it around for one last look at our home planet. As a result, the iconic image of our planet was taken and titled Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan. “That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives... We are just a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. For us, we’re the mote of dust: That’s here. That’s home.’’ (Sagan, 1994)
It is our responsibility to preserve the life that has graced our small world through a development that meets the fundamental necessities without compromising the needs of future generations.
Questioning the comprehension of the place we call home, HOME is a transdisciplinary project that considers the causes of increasing climate change and proposes a line of action based on awareness and collective effort to ensure sustainable development. By identifying in the use of clean and renewable energy a tool to mitigate the global warming emergency, the project’s outcome is a solar-powered lamp designed for everyday use. The eventual goal is to introduce solar technology in the domestic routine of contemporary dwellings, fostering clean energy as a valid alternative to traditional CO2 emitting sources.
Key objectives for sustainability
Considering the rise of planet Earth’s surface average temperature, this project declines the term sustainability in its environmental meaning, facing an emergency that endangers contemporary and future generations. Global warming is the result of uncontrolled anthropogenic activity leading to climate change, and every human is responsible to gain awareness of its alarming effects on the natural patterns, and on how to positively contributing.
Despite reducing harmful emissions as soon as possible would substantially cut the impact of climate change, 80% of the world’s energy comes from non-renewable sources (International Energy Agency, 2021). HOME identifies in the sun a renewable and universally available source, and in solar technology the easiest way to reduce CO2 emissions on a domestic everyday use basis.
Through the design of a practical object such as a solar LED lamp, the project proposes to introduce a clean and consolidated technology within the contemporary household's environment as part of a daily routine committed to reducing emissions. Despite energy consumption and emissions related to lighting represents a small percentage of the whole balance of a dwelling, getting the users comfortable with solar technology through a small object of everyday use carries the ambitious goal to foster future decisions — such as the installation of a solar system powering the whole house — based on an aware understanding of the possibilities for renewable and sustainable sources.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
The solar-powered lamp HOME is a lighting device designed to be an everyday experience of use. It consists of a case containing the technological components, mounted on a light transparent structure, being a high-quality addition to the domestic environment. The device’s first peculiarity regards the type of lights and their possibilities of usage. The system is composed of a high-performative solar panel transmitting the energy from the sun to a rechargeable battery powering two different and independent LEDs: the first one is a warm-white light, while the second one is a symbolic blue light representing the Pale Blue Dot, our planet in the deepness of universe.
The 82x82mm case — an explicit reference to the 8’20” that light needs to reach the Earth from the Sun — is mounted on a small transparent structure, designed to be portable, and to fit on a windowsill or a small night table. The case is connected to the structure via a 360° pivoting hinge, thus allowing easily orient the solar panel mounted on the back of the case to catch solar rays and to freely address the lights during usage time. The position of the solar panel and the LEDs has been combined to allow a zero-maintenance use mode when the lamp is located close to a window: during the day — also in absence of direct sun — the daylight recharges the device, allowing from 5 to 10 hours of clean energy based on intensity and battery capacity.
Key objectives for inclusion
Nowadays, solar technology is well-consolidated and whether it is common for large applications in the built environment, being often a compulsory requirement for new constructions, it is still stranger to most uses in terms of daily life routine. Many of the human-scaled solar-powered devices currently on the market are designed for outdoor applications such as camping or garden lighting, where electricity is not available. HOME’s outcome is an innovative object designed for domestic use, working in every context — both in the presence or absence of a grid — to be a conscious high-quality alternative to the traditional existing LED lamp types.
Physical or other transformations
Innovative character
The project is the outcome of a transdisciplinary approach combining science, culture, product design, and technology for sustainable development. Requiring only basic knowledge to be engineered, the solar device HOME proposes everyday access to clean energy, and by relying upon an affordable technology, the target of addressed users is potentially unlimited. This symbolic domestic product bears the ambitious goal to establish a dialogue with its users; not only allowing the users to familiarize with an effective and innovative way of using clean energy but also to evoke the uniqueness of our home planet Earth — Pale Blue Dot.
As Carl Sagan reflected on Pale Blue Dot; “The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”
