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Using solar power in a land where sun is plentiful, Kiss + Cathcart help bring electricity to the Navajo Nation.
By Ken Shulman
May 2002
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This photovoltaic-roofed pavilion (2000; above and below), which serves
as the Seba Dalkai School's outdoor classroom and stage, is just one of
Kiss + Cathcart's solar projects for the Navajo nation reservation in
Arizona.
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Native American Photovoltaics (NAPV), the nonprofit
organization that constructs the projects, consists of all Navajo
workers (above).
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The photovoltaic sheds (detail; above) generate one
kilowatt of energy, enough for basic household utilities.
Photos: Courtesy Native American Photovoltaics
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There are days when it's easy to see the future as Gregory Kiss sees it--especially
from the roof of the Temple Bar Building in Brooklyn Heights, where Kiss
+ Cathcart Architects moved in August 2000 after 15 years in Manhattan.
From here, looking north across the East River, the Condé Nast Building
at 4 Times Square stands lit by the sun like a stage actor in the spotlight.
The Fox & Fowle-designed skyscraper features seven floors of photovoltaic
panels that Kiss and his partner Colin Cathcart integrated into the south
and east faces of the tower. Further south, at the tip of Manhattan, a column
of midwinter light plunges onto another Kiss + Cathcart project, the Whitehall
Ferry Terminal. There the architects have designed a photovoltaic array
to be installed across the terminal's broad waterside facade.
"It's not enough to tack a few photovoltaic panels onto the south side
of a roof or house and tilt them at a 30-degree angle toward the sun,"
says Kiss, shuffling absentmindedly between the three copper-domed roof
towers that will serve as anchors for a solar pavilion, display space, and
laboratory the architects hope to build this summer. "The generation
of electricity is important. But even in this field, aesthetics are inseparable
from function. We have to begin using this technology not just as an adjunct,
and not just as prototype, but as a structural element. If this technology
is ever to gain broad acceptance, it has to become part of the general language
of design."
As an architect and partner in the firm he founded with fellow Columbia
graduate Cathcart in 1983, Kiss has used the electricity-generating panels
in projects across the globe: as spandrel windows in moderate-income housing
in the Netherlands; as roof and sun filter for a Smithsonian Institution
research laboratory in Panama. An unrealized Kiss + Cathcart project involved
draping custom-shaped photovoltaic scales in an elegant reptilian skin around
the crumbling facade of a German utility company. It may seem ironic, then,
in this triumph of high-profile, high-design work, that Kiss's most substantial
and tangible contribution to sustainable design may well be a series of
simple solar units adjacent to homes on the Navajo reservation in northern
Arizona.
"The Navajo are the biggest potential market for photovoltaics in the
United States," says Kiss, who four years ago founded the nonprofit
organization Native American Photovoltaics (NAPV), of which he is president.
"There are an estimated 20,000 homes without electricity there. And
with the price of running power lines currently at $22,000 per mile, they're
never going to get it conventionally."
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The firm has designed similar shady structures to be used adjacent to
houses, such as those for the Chischilli (top left), Monroe (top middle),
Dixon (top right), Barnett (bottom left) and
Yazzie (bottom middle & right) families.
Photos: Courtesy Native American Photovoltaics
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Kiss estimates that the units he and Cathcart developed for NAPV would sell
wholesale, built and installed, for $10,000. But the costs of living off
the grid are even more dramatic for the Navajo. Lack of daytime current
erodes an already low rate of productivity for their artisans and craftspeople.
Lack of nighttime reading light exacerbates a continuing illiteracy problem.
Elderly couples living in isolated homes have neither entertainment nor
means of summoning help in a health-care emergency. Because many reservation
residents are unable to store fresh meat, fish, and vegetables, their diet
suffers. The Navajo also have one of the highest rates of diabetes in the
world. "In some ways, it's like the developing world," Kiss says,
"where there are two billion people without electric current."
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