SOLAR LABORATORY – rethinking solar intelligence
Nicolas König
Ansgar Stadler
»820 x Ansgar Stadler« form the Solar Laboratory – a Zurich-based working group initiated by the architecture studio 820 in collaboration with Ansgar Stadler. Together, we explore architecture as a tool to rethink narratives, relationships, and shared spaces in response to ecological and sociopolitical challenges.
Since 2022, our research has focused on the tensions between solar potential and climate crisis – translating conceptual inquiry into spatial prototypes, speculative narratives, public formats and material experiments. From thermodynamic feedback to domestic rituals, our work approaches architecture as both cultural actuator and ecological interface. We work with what exists—radiation, tools, constraints—not to preserve, but to retool. We search for resonance: between humans and heat, infrastructure and ethics, care and construction. In the Solar Laboratory, architecture is not a solution but a rehearsal—a technology of attention and imagination for futures not yet fully formed. We aim to cultivate a design culture rooted in reciprocity, sufficiency, and solar intelligence – one that embraces the speculative as a tool for transformation.
Nicolas König, Lewis Horkulak, and Ansgar Stadler studied architecture at institutions including ETH Zurich, the University of the Arts Berlin, the Royal Danish Academy, TU Berlin, Bauhaus University Weimar, TU Munich, and NUS Singapore. Their individual work has been recognized with awards such as the ETH Medal, RIBA Silver Medal nomination, German Design Newcomer Award, Foundation Award, Vectorworks Scholarship, Baumeister Scholarship, and Ernst Neufert Prize. In 2024, Nicolas and Lewis co-founded the Zurich-based studio 820, followed by the formation of the collective dorsa + 820. Ansgar, currently working at Comte/Meuwly in Zurich, collaborates closely with them; together, they received the Ernst Schindler Travel Fellowship.
The Sun is our oldest infrastructure. For billions of years, it has choreographed life with relentless precision. Energy pours toward us – abundant and inexhaustible – yet our response remains extractive. As the atmosphere overheats, we cling to logics of depletion, scripting collapse in the name of progress. Solar energy – immaterial yet omnipresent – remains absent from our cultural imagination. Photovoltaic fields spread across deserts; panels cling to rooftops as ornamental afterthoughts. These technological terrains are often seen as blemishes rather than cultural catalysts. Architecture, once a medium to negotiate climate, now renders energy invisible – outsourced and abstract.
The Solar Laboratory positions itself as an experimental network to reframe the role of solar energy in architectural culture. It explores the tangible, rhythmic, and social dimensions of energy: the optical and material intelligence of sunlight, its technical and territorial potentials, and the domestic rituals shaped by its presence. Through collective experimentation, the Laboratory proposes to design architecture that reveals rather than conceals energy – structures that breathe with thermal cycles and foster sensitivity over control. It envisions buildings interwoven with solar infrastructures and everyday rituals, where energy is experienced as presence, not absence. This inquiry unfolds through a growing constellation of activities: a solar workshop for the Vilnius Academy of Arts; the team ELECTRYONE installation and publication for the Zurich Design Biennale; a contribution to Vesper Magazine; and public exhibitions at Modern Animals Gallery Zurich and SODAS 2123. Events like the 2024 Solar Festival at Zentrum Architektur Zürich extend this engagement. By making energy visible, tangible, and shareable, the Laboratory reframes architecture as a site of negotiation – between planetary forces and human practices – cultivating an ethic of sufficiency and reciprocity.