64 kW Negawatt Power Plant

About

“Updating Germany – Projects for a Better Future” is the motto of the German contribution to the 11th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale 2008. It is a collection of small and large steps towards a better future – ecologically and socially sustainable projects that are currently being conceptualized, planned or carried out in Germany or by German architects, designers and engineers. Though the updates include some buildings, the majority are research projects, design experiments and pilot schemes emerging not just in the worlds of architecture and urban planning, but also bio- and nanotechnology, politics, economics and art. They represent potential solutions for problems in energy usage, mobility, nutrition, resource allocation and climate – in short, the problems of the future.

As one of these projects, artist Siegrun Appelt’s light installation 64 kW serves as a visual exclamation point for a more conscious handling of energy resources. The installation, located in the entrance to the German Pavilion in Venice, shines with four times the intensity of the sun on a cloudless day. The shining light and the heat it generates make traversing the installation a truly physical experience; exhibition visitors can live the connection between energy use and waste.

The work calls on visitors to save energy and then symbolically donate that energy to the 64 kW Negawatt Power Plant. The plant was inspired by Amory Lovins’ term negawatt, which the physicist introduced as a unit for measuring saved energy.

The first energy donator for the 64 kW Negawatt Power Plant is the city of Berlin. Once the Biennale begins, the illumination at the Brandenburg Gate will be turned on and off over the course of several days according to a choreography designed by Appelt herself. This light-update of Berlin’s most prominent emblem will serve as a prime example of the fact that saving energy needn’t only mean abnegation, but also, the creation of a surplus.

Though such large-scale energy donations are greatly appreciated, the work is particularly intended as a platform for voluntary energy savings in everyday life. Anyone can take part by making an individual donation, be it replacing an old light bulb with an energy-saving one, riding a bike to work or performing any other energy-saving act. Individual energy-saving ideas will be collected in the Negawatt Power Plant.

One can donate to the plant directly at the exhibition in Venice or via the Internet portal Utopia.de. At www.utopia.de/negawatt/, users from around the world can donate individually saved energy and thereby participate in a forum for everyday, visionary and extraordinary energy saving. That way, the 64 kW Negawatt Power Plant will become an idea pool for a more conscious handling of resources.

The plant can be seen as an experiment: will the 64 kW installation be executed in a climate neutral manner? How willing are people to make individual energy sacrifices? What new ideas for energy saving will emerge out of the Negawatt Power Plant?

Please submit energy donations of more than 99 kWh via email to negawatt@updatinggermany.de. Feel free to include photographic material.