What Makes a Solar Designer? New Framework Reshapes Clean Energy Careers
A four-year study redefines the role of solar designers as relationship-builders rather than pure technicians, offering a three-layer framework that integrates personal expertise, technology, and ecological thinking. For companies and institutions scaling solar adoption, this insight suggests hiring and training practices need to prioritize design thinking and stakeholder engagement alongside engineering skills.
Originaltitel: Manifestos and manifestations: The role of a solar designer
<p>What does it mean to be a solar designer? The article builds upon earlier work encompassing a 4-year study on the role of a solar designer, and offers further artistic and methodological explorations to re-define what it means to be a solar designer today. I autoethnographically explore what it means to be a solar designer through artistic material making at the world’s first Solar Biennale, by performing 10 micro-phenomenological interviews with solar experts from different fields of expertise, as well as by conducting a workshop with 15 high school students as part of an Agenda 2030 exhibition at Norrbottens Museum in Luleå, Sweden. These designerly explorations, synthesised through an overarching framework of Relational Design, offer an updated perspective on what it means to be a solar designer – a necessary endeavour as part of an ongoing and evolving sustainable societal transformation. The updated visual taxonomy is offered as a guide to future solar designers and solar design researchers who are interested in a design-as-relationship-building approach, consisting of three key layers: The Embodied Self, Space & Technology, and Embedded & Ecological Relations. The article culminates in a discussion that expands and challenges these three key layers vis-à-vis discourses on sustainability, ethics, and relationality. </p>