Re:LAYER

The increasing integration of photovoltaics into architecture and building envelopes raises a key question: How can highly efficient, yet visually technical solar technology becomes a high-quality design element in architecture?
Re:LAYER responds to this challenge with a multi-layered design system that combines technical efficiency and design quality. Solar modules form the functional backbone at the center. In front of them, a curtain wall made of recycled acrylic sheets or fragments is installed. These come from industrial waste materials such as offcuts, miscuts, or production surpluses from laser cutting and advertising technology. Different colors, shapes, sizes, and transparencies remain deliberately visible; nothing is homogenized. What was originally thermally recycled becomes a design element. Overlapping, layering, and depth gradation create relief-like structures with intense light, color, and shadow effects. The incident sunlight refracts in the acrylic layers, constantly changing and creating shifting patterns and color moods. Thus, the solar panel is transformed from a simple rectangular functional unit into a visual art object. Energy generation becomes visible, atmospheric, and tangible. An interplay of nature, light, and material is created. An efficiency loss of approximately 10% is expected, but this is deliberately accepted for design reasons. The acrylic glass layer acts as a design translation of technology. It gives the surface depth, scale, and rhythm and reacts dynamically to the time of day, the position of the sun, and the viewing angle.

Depending on the design, the product appears calm and rational or expressive and iconic. Acrylic glass offers high UV and weather resistance as well as long-term dimensional stability. This makes it very suitable for outdoor use and thus forms a symbiosis with the solar module itself. An essential principle is participation: the acrylic panels are provided as a modular system and attached by the users themselves. A movable hook mechanism allows elements to be exchanged, rearranged, or expanded at any time. Each layer becomes an individual, unique composition. The panel becomes a transformable design object instead of a static surface. At the same time, the system remains recyclable. The mechanically fastened elements can be replaced individually and can be recycled or reused according to type. Recycling is not hidden but made architecturally legible. The traces of origin, process, and transformation remain visible.
Re:LAYER does not view photovoltaics as a necessary evil, but as a creative resource. The project combines functionality, sustainability, and art to create a new facade typology in which energy generation and material awareness can be experienced spatially, visually, and sensually. Each panel thus becomes a flexible, constantly changing system and a harmonious combination of environment and design.