Ra

Marjan van Aubel

Marjan van Aubel creates self-powered lamps, electricity-producing windows, and installations that make us feel connected to sunlight. Her designs use solar cells that convert colour into electricity. Using new technologies, she can flexibly and colourfully integrate solar energy into everything around us.

As the energy industry wages war over dwindling fossil-fuel supplies, the sun provides enough energy each day to power the entire planet. Solar energy is available, but due to a focus on efficiency, 95% is generated using the familiar dark panels, which have limited applications. New technologies could turn numerous unused surfaces into a key part of the solution.

We talked to Marjan about her fascination with the sun and colour as an energy source, the importance of beauty in sustainability, and the global Solar Movement she’s co-creating.

Text: Lonneke Craemers, Photography: Blickfänger

Hi Marjan, congratulations on your spot on the Secrid Talent Podium! Have you always been a creative girl?

Looking back, I was creative but unaware of it. I grew up in Brabant and, as a child, I wanted to be an inventor. I also had an inventors’ club – one of many little clubs that I started in my childhood.

Both my grandfathers painted, and I’d often visit them for lessons. My parents are always creating things as well, and my father still paints. For many years, he’s been working on representing the fourth dimension in three dimensions. He creates elaborate geometric shapes that are truly stunning.

He creates a funny mix of science and art, a combination that I also recognize in myself.

You now combine science and art as a solar designer. How did that journey unfold?

Honestly, my journey began with the intention of leaving Brabant for Amsterdam. So, I went to the Rietveld Academy. In my first year, I learned about photography, fine art, and took four weeks of design classes.

Chris Kabel was a guest teacher back then, he was fantastic. He taught me how to use a product to tell a story. That was what I felt was missing in art, which was too abstract for me. I enjoyed making tangible things, and after that I developed two materials to reduce waste: foam porcelain and foam wood.

After that, I did a master’s degree at the Royal College of Art in London. I wrote my thesis on the future of colour. That’s how I discovered solar cells that use dye from blueberries to generate energy. I’d never heard of anything like that before.

In that same time, I also read The Solar Revolution, a fact-filled book that explains how we receive enough daily sunlight to power the whole world. That changed my mind. I thought: “Why aren’t we using this technology?”

The sun provides enough daily energy to supply the entire planet with electricity. Why is that so important to you?

We’re extracting gas and oil for our energy supply, but those sources are running out. Wars are being fought over them. Meanwhile, the sun is always present and can provide energy everywhere.

I abandoned my materials research to focus entirely on solar energy. I actually see solar cells as a material to work with. I visited the professor with the blueberries and made my first so-called dye-sensitized solar cells with him.

When that succeeded, I thought: “If every colour can generate energy, then everything can generate its own energy!” That’s still the basis of my work today. By now, I’ve been working on this for twelve years.

Every hour we receive enough sunlight to supply the Earth with electricity for a year.

If you can use every colour to generate energy, why are solar panels always dark?

You can generate electricity using colour. Solar cells are usually blue or black because they absorb a lot of light efficiently. Until now, we’ve had a very technocratic and economic approach to solar energy for scale and mass. That’s why 95% of it still comes from the standard silicon cells you typically see on roofs and fields.

But any colour can generate energy. Much like photosynthesis, where plants use sunlight to fuel growth, solar cells harness photons, particles of light carrying immense energy. When these strike pigment molecules, electrons are released and set in motion, creating electricity.

So, to generate electricity, you need a colour to absorb some of the sunlight. Different colours have different wavelengths, making some more efficient than others. This makes perfect sense when you understand how colours work: a leaf is green because it absorbs all other colours and reflects green light.

Darker colours absorb more light and generate more electricity. Greater transparency, as in a window, reduces the amount of light entering the cell.

If regular panels are so efficient, what’s the issue with this technology?

In my opinion, we should drop the efficiency focus. Solar energy is already the cheapest energy source in many countries. It’s not about efficiency anymore, but about the fact that there are places where standard silicon solar panels can’t be used. They produce no energy at all, despite the availability of sunlight and new technologies.

We shouldn’t always be making the comparison to solar panels. Instead, we should be comparing to, for instance, windows that serve no purpose. We have an abundance of them, so any energy we generate from windows is pure profit. And this applies to many surfaces or products that need power, like walls, awnings, lamps, or mobile phones.

Also, those silicon cells are really just sand, but 99.9% pure. Reaching that level of purity demands a huge amount of energy, which is an often-overlooked fact. With standard cells, you offset the energy used to make them within a few years, but with new technologies, it only takes a few months.

On top of this, the panels we currently use have been designed to be inseparable, posing a significant future problem. We’re going to end up with a lot of unusable waste.

If there are so many potential surfaces that do not generate any electricity, why do we see so little of these new solar technologies yet?

New technologies like dye-sensitized solar cells only account for only 5% of all solar cell technology. Until now, our focus on efficiency and payback time has left little room for emotional and cultural values, like beauty, which has limited the social acceptance of solar energy.

Luckily, more technologies are being developed. Organic Photovoltaics or OPV, for example, works with carbon in organic materials instead of dye. These are incredibly thin and flexible cells that can be printed on recycled PET. Or solar cells that can change colour. I think that's really amazing too, but it's still in the lab phase. There are so many possibilities.

Companies are also increasingly incorporating them into architectural applications. In Roosendaal, for example, there’s a company that can print photos or patterns on solar cells. Visually it just looks beautiful, but every surface generates energy.

That is also my perspective. My story is that everything should generate energy – buildings, streets, glass, ceramics, textiles. And the power of beauty can help to harness solar energy’s full potential. As a designer, I can contribute to that.

What do you create to make solar energy more beautiful?

Aesthetics is crucial. It can help us build a meaningful emotional relationship with the sun. When something is beautiful, your brain reacts positively. It affects your mood. You’re willing to invest more energy into beautiful things, spend more time around them, and you’re likely to take better care of them.

To me, beauty should also consider things like the production process, materials, and locality. That’s something I considered a lot when designing Sunne, my solar-powered lamp, which is entirely modular. It has been put together with screws, so every part can be disassembled. The battery can be replaced easily, unlike the battery of an iPhone, which you can’t even reach.

If color can generate energy, then everything can generate its own energy!

Can you tell us more about that lamp, Sunne?

Sunne is a solar-powered lamp that mimics the sun. For example, it switches on at sunset. It has solar cells on one side to capture sunlight and emits light on the other. You can choose between three settings using an app: Sunrise, Sunset, and Sunlight.

It’s about bringing the magic of a sunrise or sunset into your home. A kind of natural technology that makes you feel more connected to the sun. When the lamp comes on, you’re reminded that it has set, something many city dwellers might not otherwise notice.

Such interaction and experience are important to me. They are crucial for developing a better relationship with the sun. You can read about something, but if you genuinely want to change something, you need to feel it. You need your senses for that. My designs are intended to create that spark of magic. They’re designed to move you.

What else do you create to enhance our relationship with the sun?

My products mainly focus on interior design, because I’m freer working indoors than outdoors. Indoors, you can be much more expressive, creating products that double as works of art.

Right now, I’m working on something very colourful, called RA. It’s a kind of stained-glass panel you can place in front of the window. They’re made of very thin film that glows beautifully at night. And I’m also exploring other possibilities, like glass or fabric. I’m eager to dive into and develop these new materials.

For me, it’s all about the fact that a window can tell a story about a future in which we recognize the sun’s power and presence. That’s why I also create various installations centred on the sun, which allow people to hear, see, and feel our connection with it.

RA is a type of stained glass that can be hung in front of windows. How much electricity can products like Sunne and RA generate?

With Sunne, you get about two hours of evening light from an hour of daytime sunlight. The yield from a window depends on the window in question, the technology used, and its application. In London, I once made an entire house with stained glass where each window could charge a phone.

Initially, however, it’s not about the yield, because we’re generating energy in places where it’s not currently being generated. Unlike with a standard panel, you still need to be able to see through a window. It’s important to know what comparison you’re making.

Where can we find your products, and are they available for purchase?

I started crowdfunding Sunne on Kickstarter, and it went really well – almost too well, in fact. It even led to us setting up a separate production company. But that left me feeling exhausted, and I learned it wasn’t what I wanted to be doing. I prefer to stay involved in researching and developing new ideas.

Now Van Mokum in Amsterdam is taking over Sunne’s production, which is better for me. I can focus on what I’m good at – inventing things – and let them handle production and marketing. You can visit their showroom if you’d like to see or order a Sunne.

Sunne is also featured in many museum collections, including Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Design Museum Gent, en Vitra Design Museum, Mudac. I’ve only ever made three or four pieces for RA, but the Centre Pompidou in Paris has already included one in their collection.

Solar energy should be ubiquitous and integrated into everything.

Starting a business left you with an empty battery. What energizes you?

I want to meet new people, discover new materials, and enter new collaborations. That’s also what I enjoyed about Sunne, so many people were involved. TNO helped create a solar cell that works indoors, which is unusual. We also added an app, and I’m not an industrial designer, so I needed help with all of that.

For new designs like RA, I want to find partners early on to scale up my designs.

I’d also like to collaborate with an architect or product developer willing to involve me and make me part of the concept from the start – not as a last-minute afterthought when they suddenly decide to add solar energy.

In my work, I enjoy creating novel connections between things. Sure, I could design a panel, but we already have those. I want to create something new, something we don’t yet know can generate solar energy. Finding partners willing to build on the unknown can be difficult, but they’re the ones I’m looking for.

I also want to keep telling the story. I want to expand the Solar Movement. Bringing people together, sharing knowledge, growing the movement – that all energizes me much more than running a factory.

What is the Solar Movement and why did you initiate it?

Solar energy will be everywhere and integrated into everything. In the future, a product or building may be considered “non-functional” if it doesn’t generate its own energy. For example, my phone is empty right now, but it should really be able to charge itself. So, I think we’re going to see that 5% of alternative solar cells grow.

In fact, I’ve written a book called Solar Futures. It’s about the past, present, and future of solar energy, which was a lot of fun to write. I’ve learned what steps we can take to design this post-fossil fuel era by talking to architects, scientists, and curators. The book is very visual, with a lot of pictures.

In short, I think everything that requires energy could draw it from the sun. Not through force, but through such natural and beautiful integration into products that people won’t even notice.

What’s your vision for the future?

In short, I think everything that requires energy could draw it from the sun. Not through force, but through such natural and beautiful integration into products that people won’t even notice.

Finally, what is the most important message you want to share with readers?

I’d love people to start viewing the sun differently and feeling more connected to it. And I also want them to feel that there’s hope for the future – even if sometimes it might not seem that way in current times.

The sun is there every day — today, tomorrow, the day after. It will always be there. The technologies to convert its energy into electricity are here. Together, we can use them to make the world a bright and colourful place.

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