What if a building was so light that on a windy day it could take off and elevate in the air? This is the question that Tomás Saraceno asked himself when developing Solar Bell. With this body of work the visionary artist shares his dreams of a utopian new land, not reclaimed from the sea, but from gravity itself. Solar Bell is a flying sculpture, a vision of a flying plaza, a hovering observation tower. The sculpture, fully lifted by the wind, is built using the latest technologies in the field of lightweight materials and sustainable energy technologies. To optimize the realization of his design, Saraceno and his team worked closely with the Aerospace Engineering Faculty at TU Delft, The Netherlands. The design uses light and extremely robust carbon fiber tubing and flexible, paper-thin solar panels to make it lighter than air.
