Image Credit: Historic Denver
Image Credit: Historic Denver In 2011, two years after Löf's death, the house was on the market awaiting a buyer.
Image Credit: Anthony Denzer These sturdy red cardboard tubes were filled with gravel. Hot air from the solar collectors could be directed to the gravel bins, which acted as thermal storage batteries. This illustration of George Löf’s heating system appeared in the February 1958 issue of Popular Science magazine.
Image Credit: Popular Science
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Here is some sad but not surprising news: the George Löf house — one of the seminal buildings in the history of the solar house and certainly a modernist landmark worthy of protection and preservation — was recently destroyed. I visited the Denver site earlier this year and found a large excavation and a foundation (presumably) for a McMansion.
Most of us associate the term “solar house” with the 1973 energy crisis. But the feasibility of solar houses in the 1970s would have been impossible without the earlier exploratory work by pioneers such as George Löf. The house Löf built for himself in Denver, in 1955-56, was a seminal experiment in solar heating, using an innovative system of rooftop collectors, solar-heated air, and gravel storage. It “became a model for emerging solar home heating systems and attracted engineers from around the world,” according to theWall Street Journal.
Present at the creation
在20世纪的太阳屋运动中，没有人比乔治·洛夫（GeorgeLöf）发挥更持久的作用。可以这么说，他出席了该作品，当时Hottel于1939年在麻省理工学院建造了有史以来的第一个“活跃”太阳能屋时，他是Hoyt Hottel的学生到安装在丹佛房屋中的系统。他将在该领域活跃数十年，并担任国际太阳能学会主席。
In the 1970s, the George Löf house was frequently hailed for having the oldest continuously operating active solar heating system in the world. Löf lived in the home until his death in October 2009 at the age of 95. (For more information on George Löf, see my book,The Solar House: Pioneering Sustainable Design, orGeorge Löf: Denver’s Solar Pioneer. A February 1958 magazine article on the George Löf house is available online:“Will Your Next House Get Its Heat from the Sun?”)
A tear-down
在拆除之前，Löf房屋处于原始状态，包括屋顶上的平板太阳能收集器（空气加热器）。自57年前的建造以来，它几乎没有被触及：我的估计甚至没有一层涂料。图片＃2（下图）显示了我在2011年9月访问时的LöfHouse的样子。
At that time (two years after Löf’s death), the house was vacant and for sale. Because of the large size of the lot, the condition of the house, and the (wealthy) neighborhood, it was predictable that the house would be purchased as a tear-down. At that time I contacted the realtor and local preservation groups to make sure that the house’s importance was understood, but obviously to no avail.
As I document and discuss in great detail in my book, the Löf house was remarkable for its technical innovation and for the sympathetic relationship between the architects (James Hunter of Boulder, assisted by Tician Papachristou) and the engineer (Löf). The design was celebrated by theNew York Timesfor its heating system and Hunter’s “modern lines.”
The rooftop collectors, still in place in 2011 and just barely visible behind plywood screens, produced hot air which could be sent straight to the rooms of the house or to gravel tubes that were used to store the heat. The sympathy between architecture and engineering was expressed most beautifully by Hunter’s decision to place the cardboard tubes near the staircase in the center of the house, visible from the entrance, and to paint them bright red. (And in a wonderfully poetic contrast he formed a concrete chimney from the same type of cardboard tube, and painted the chimney a cool blue.)
Only photos and the blueprints remain
I visited Dr. Löf at the house just a few months before his death. He was bright, and we had a long conversation.
He gave me the original set of blueprints to the house, and I suspect, sadly, that he recognized that the drawings wouldn’t be needed by the next owners of the property.
安东尼Denzerteaches architectural engineering at the University of Wyoming and is the author ofThe Solar House: Pioneering Sustainable Design.
6 Comments
Sad story, great piece
谢谢你的历史课。真遗憾。
Solar pioneers
These days, now that we understand the importance of airtight construction methods and the advantages of superinsulation, it's easy to dismiss those who use active solar thermal equipment as misguided. But the pioneers of the 1940s and 1950s were visionaries, and all of us in the green building movement stand on their shoulders. When I began working as a builder in 1974, the "solar house" movement was still with us, and we all eagerly read the stories of pioneering work by the 1939 MIT team and George Löf. (I first learned about the 1939 MIT researchers in a college engineering course I took in 1973).
Indeed, the story about the destruction of George Löf's house is sad.
Denver looses another great house
这是在太阳能供暖和中叶现代设计中的有趣房屋中。太糟糕了，它消失了。
More pictures in this slide show from组织ric Denver
George Lof
Anthony, thanks for caring and following this story.
我于1978 - 79年在CSU Seal的George下学习，并于1982 - 83年担任Solaron（他成立的公司）的设计工程师。我父亲在1930 - 1931年与他一起参加了丹佛的东部。
At Solaron, my main job was to expand our market share in water-based solar thermal because we had been learning that air-based systems were relatively inefficient. That was a bit ironic because Solaron was the world leader in air-based solar and George had been the world's leading expert in the field for over 40 years by that time.
Now, liquid based solar thermal is being supplanted by net-metered solar PV for economic reasons. And my company is tearing down old homes in Denver near light rail and replacing them with PV powered net zero homes. Passive solar is still in the mix when possible, but Denver's street grid only allows 10% passive solar homes.
Demolition
I really thought that this type of wanton vandalism was a feature of this country (Australia) but it seems I was mistaken. From the photographs it appears that this important house was not beyond rescue, but the line in the report about the footings for a McMansion being in place is extremely alarming. When are governments - because consumers, builders and many designers are not - going to recognise that the planet can not support the endless proliferation of McMansions? If it requires legislation, then so be it, although given the current hooha in your country about the introduction of Obama's health care policy, I guess I am off with the fairies. I am still fuming however.
谢谢for the comments,
谢谢for the comments, everyone. If you're interested in the general subject of early experimental solar houses, please visit solarhousehistory.com
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