THE NOVARTIS PAVILLON: A ZERO-ENERGY MEDIA FAÇADE POWERED BY ORGANIC PHOTOVOLTAICS Hermann Issa - Senior Vice President Business Development & Project Management, ASCA

The

Novartis Pavillon:

A Zero-energy Media Façade Powered by Organic Photovoltaics

Credit: Laurits Jensen

The Novartis Pavillon is the latest addition to the campus of the pharmaceutical company Novartis in Basel. Opened in April 2022, the circular two-level building houses the permanent multimedia exhibition Wonders of Medicine and offers, furthermore, open space for learning, meetings and events. This curved landmark of contemporary architecture embodies the biggest installation in the world with solar modules from carbon-based organic materials, designed and produced by the organic photovoltaics global leader ASCA. The zero-energy media façade of the building, powered by solar electricity, illuminates the pavilion and displays content from various artists.

From David Chipperfield and Frank Gehry to Tadao Ando – several famous architects have already realised their visions and designed specific buildings at the Novartis Campus in Basel, situated directly on the river Rhine. In 2017, Novartis announced an international competition for a new building to host an exhibition which could visualise and explain the process of developing medicine. The Milan-based studio AMDL CIRCLE won the contest. The architects collaborated closely with local architect and general planner Blaser Butscher Architekten AG, who were responsible for planning, tenders, technical design, construction, and delivery of the project. The Basel-based studio for media architectures iart and one of the world’s leaders in exhibition design ATELIER BRÜCKNER won a second Novartis competition to set up the exhibition.

Credit: iart

From a donut to a dome

“At first, we developed a circular looping building with a mirror surface, floating in the landscape. In the course of the project, we simplified the building and shaped it like a donut, but Novartis asked us to make the building more expressive and contemporary”, Nicholas Bewick, project architect at AMDL Circle, explains. So together with the studio for media architectures iart, AMDL CIRCLE developed the idea of a media façade.

Credit: iart

“It was our goal to produce enough solar electricity to power the façade”, iart´s founder and chairman Valentin Spiess explains. For this reason, iart approached the organic photovoltaics global leader ASCA in 2019. “The translucency of ASCA´s solutions was key for us. It enabled us to create layers and illuminate the building with direct and indirect light by using the metal façade as a reflector”, Spiess says. “In addition, ASCA´s solutions convinced us because they are light and flexible – and can therefore easily follow the curves of the dome-shaped building – and can be manufactured in a wide range of colours”, he adds.

“Silicon solar cells look like television screens and that is not what we wanted. Novartis wanted to make a statement, and thanks to our collaboration, we managed to realise this stunning project. With this expressive design, we broke down barriers between artists and scientists and were able to visualise the scientists´ work”, Bewick says.

Infinite freedom for designers

ASCA started to develop the solar modules in 2020. The requirements were to create solutions that are transparent and designable, can be produced in scalable processes, installed on curved surfaces, integrated into polycarbonate and have different forms and shapes. To simplify the installation on the dome-shaped building, it was also important for the architects that the solar modules could be bent in a cold forming process. And ASCA succeeded, without any compromises.

Credit: Laurits Jensen

Credit: iart

Credit: iart While technology-driven compromises are always necessary with silicon, ASCA´s carbonbased organic solutions create an infinite freedom of design. In contrast to silicon solar cells, they are printed, can be integrated into any material and can take any shape.

Within 15 months, ASCA planned, designed and produced more than 10,000 semi-transparent blue diamond- and triangle-shaped solar modules with ten different sizes and laminated them into polycarbonate. The company developed them to be perfectly integrated in the structure according to the ideas of iart. To achieve this goal, they incorporated holes in the middle of the panel to let the light from the LEDs go through, and curved angles at the corners leave some space for the screws of the mounting system. These details were important to provide a full design freedom of this technology for the architects.

The same is true for the connection points: ASCA did not work with classical junction boxes as used with classical silicon modules. Instead, the company designed the connection point together with iart. As people can see everything shining through the transparent

ASCA: Reinventing the use of solar energy into the building envelope

ASCA modules generate energy from light coming from all directions and even in low light conditions, allowing solar energy to be used on façades, balustrades, skylights and shading systems, regardless of their form or material. The solutions can be produced in any shape and in different colours, and can be integrated into glass, polycarbonate or textiles, making it possible to produce energy on any surface. Based on organic materials, the solar modules do not use rare earth materials and have a very low environmental footprint.

Besides diamond and triangle shapes, ASCA has already produced hexagons for solar trees and green stripes for glass balustrades, for example. Sizes can vary from small projects with 1, 2 or 3 square meters up to 2,500 square meters as realised for the Novartis Pavillon in Basel. Thanks to the printing process, the scalability is infinite, and ASCA is not limited to any quantity or size.

On top of design and production, ASCA takes responsibility for integrating the architectural and technical design of the printed solar cells. The aesthetical low-carbon energy solutions are based on 100 percent recoverable organic materials, a technology that improves the sustainability of architecture and is a key for energy transition.

ASCA offers solar solutions that reinvent the use of solar energy on a building because they can be seamlessly and aesthetically integrated into any new architectural structures and designs, thus becoming part of the structure itself. With ASCA´s solutions, architecture is not driven by the technology anymore, and solar modules can become part of the building envelope.

Credit: AMDL CIRCLE

Credit: iart panel, iart and ASCA decided to hide the connection in a ring on the backside of the panel.

ASCA handed over the fully connected and laminated modules to iart, who built the structure and the mounting system for the façade and constructed sub-units with 16 modules before installing them on the building façade. Thanks to the lamination in polycarbonate, the modules were flexible and could be cold-bent to follow the lines of the building.

Like a puzzle

The architects had to face many challenges. “The steel mesh had to be attached to the standing seam of the metal façade. This was very tricky, and we had to be very precise”, Spiess says. Timing and logistics were challenging as

Facts and Figures

10,680 organic solar modules, produced by ASCA 30,240 LEDs

22,536 tubes in the substructure

2,471 square meters façade surface area Power production per year (estimate) 20 MWh Planning of the façade: December 2019 to August 2021 Construction: June 2020 to December 2021

Opening April 2022

Credit: iart well. “To solve this, we started a just-in-time production and assembled the units in an old Novartis factory on the campus, just behind the construction site. Then, we attached the units with a crane.”

The media and organic photovoltaic solutions were embedded as one solution and with one wiring harness. To build the façade, iart used hundreds of different tubes, bent them to follow the lines of the dome. “The assembly was like a puzzle and very complex”, Spiess reports.

Thanks to the collaboration with the German manufacturer SolarInvert, iart was able to use bidirectional solar inverters, especially developed for this project. All inverters were attached to the ceiling inside the building and had to be very quiet. Thanks to the bidirectional solar inverters, the modules power the LEDs that display digital art animations and inject surplus energy into the building grid.

Zero-Energy Media façade

iart developed more than 30,000 two-sided LEDs and embedded them in the façade facing both outwards and in the direction of the metal shell beneath. The light reflects from the shell and shimmers outwards through the transparent modules, creating a visually multilayered membrane that can display content.

The lighting effect of the façade is created by a minimal light contrast to the environment. The ambient light is constantly measured, and the building lighting, which is slightly more intense, is continuously adjusted. In this way, energy consumption can be reduced.

Credit: Laurits Jensen

Extremely light-sensitive, ASCA´s modules generate energy from light coming from all directions, even in low light conditions, and produce energy during a long period of time. Thanks to this, the media façade consumes only the energy it can produce, resulting in a zeroenergy media façade.

“The arrangement of the solar modules on the dome-shaped building perfectly enables us to measure the electricity produced in all directions”, Spiess says. Data that iart has collected during the first few months of operation has already shown that the façade produces enough power to display text in the daytime – when the exhibition is open – and digital art animations for up to two hours after sunset. The display images from the world of medicine and environment were specially designed by the video installation artists Daniel Canogar from Spain, Esther Hunziker from Basel and the artistic duo Semiconductor from Great Britain.

“With this project, we have learned a lot about organic photovoltaic technology. Thanks to the freestanding building with different angles and inclinations, we have the perfect conditions for measuring the energy generated”, Spiess says.

Credit: iart Credit: Laurits Jensen

ASCA: www.asca.com AMDL CIRCLE: www.amdlcircle.com Iart: www.iart.ch

Hermann Issa

Hermann Issa studied architecture in Stuttgart from 1994 to 2000. After four years as a Director for Sales and Marketing at Luxor Solar GmbH, a manufacturer for crystalline PV modules, he started his career in organic photovoltaics in 2009, first for Konarka Technologies Inc. from Lowell, Massachusetts (USA), then for Belectric OPV GmbH from Nuremberg (Germany), then for OPVIUS GmbH from Nuremberg (Germany). Since 2019, Issa has been Senior Vice President Business Development & Project Management for the global market leader of organic photovoltaics ASCA, an ARMOR GROUP company.