This surely must be old news to all, as it was the runner-up in last year's Metropolis Next Generation Design Competition, but we think it needs to be entered into our archives, so that it can hypertextually decorate future posts, endlessly referenced in the hopes that heretofore unrelated ideas and/or fantasies just might spontaneously coalesce into a new landscape paradigm in a violent reactive explosion right in front of our dumbstrucked faces.

So what exactly is it? It's a proposal by Mark Oberholzer to install double-stacked Darius turbines “into the barriers between highway lanes that would harness the wind generated by passing cars to create energy,” which, in his original concept, is fed into the grid.

However, when Metropolis recently caught up with Oberholzer, we learn that he now wants to use that electricity where it is generated, as for instance, “integrating a subway or light-rail train right where the barrier is.” This, we also learn, “avoids energy losses that occur during transportation and eliminates the cost of adding extra infrastructure.”



“The ability to harness wind in an urban environment—where buildings impede airflow and installing 260-foot turbine towers isn’t exactly an option—makes his project particularly inventive.” Indeed.

(Images by Mark Oberholzer.)

In the Archives:
Wind Turbines