By Ronda Kaysen
The future residents of 88 Laight St. will not be the only ones basking in the sun on their private balconies – their balconies’ glass railings will be busy absorbing the sun’s energy, too. Made with photovoltaic technology, the tinted glass railings, the first of their kind, will absorb light from the sun to produce energy for the building itself.
“It’s like a tree and the branches stick out so the leaves can catch the sun,” said Anthony Morali of MG Architects, the building’s architect. “Well, this is my leaf.”
Although P.V. technology is nothing new, this is the first project to use P.V. glass on balcony railings. More expensive than regular glass – the balconies will tack on $200,000 to the nine-story building’s development costs – solar technology has not been particularly attractive to developers of small buildings that are crowded into light-hungry streets. But if the new balconies prove effective, that may change.
“You’re limited by what you can do with a balcony by the Department of Buildings,” said Anthony Pereira, president and C.E.O. of Alt Power, the company that developed the technology for Morali’s railings. “All of a sudden Morali has the biggest balconies on buildings. Why? Because his balcony has to be a certain size or get to a certain position on the building in order to get to the sun. So the Buildings Department says, ‘Oh, it’s not just a balcony, it’s a device that’s holding the solar panels, so it has to be a little bigger. You make a few more bucks on each apartment, so then all of a sudden you have to look at the cost effectiveness differently.”
Architect Anthony Morali, above, has designed a courtyard which will be cut out of the center of the Summit building on Greenwich St. Construction to build 90 lofts there is expected to begin in four months. At 88 Laight St., below, terraces designed by Morali are under construction and are expected to be the first residential terraces using solar technology.
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