Building-Integrated Wind Power: Conceptual Applications of the Self-Powered Built Environment

Student Speaker: Craig Forneris, M.S. in Architecture candidate, Illinois Institute of Technology

As global concern and competition intensifies over diminishing fossil fuel reserves, the need to conserve energy, develop renewable resources, and design more efficient buildings increases.

Self-powered built environments, specifically “net-zero energy buildings,” are becoming more feasible in new sustainable developments around the world.  Placing power generation at the point of its consumption is a key motivating factor for these new conceptual buildings and creates a new form of decentralized supply system—one in which the buildings themselves serve as the power plants.

The addition of building-integrated wind turbines definitely and substantially increases this potential.  Shaped to exploit potential energy from the wind, the buildings themselves serve as the “mast” for the wind turbine or array of wind turbines.
Student Craig Forneris, M.S. in Architecture candidate at IIT, works on these very real-world solutions using a mix of computational fluid dynamics and architecture to produce concepts of buildings that have near-zero environmental impact.

Join C²ST and WISER as we explore the future of sustainable buildings.

Date & Time: Tuesday, April 13, 6:30pm reception, 7:00 pm lecture
Location: Illinois Institute of Technology, S.R. Crown Hall (Lower Level), 3360 South State Street

For parking information, please click here.

The event is co-hosted by Illinois Institute of Technology’s Wanger Institute for Sustainable Energy Research (WISER) and is free and open to the public.

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Sponsors: IIT Wanger Institute on Sustainable Energy Research and the Chicago Council on Science and Technology.