Solar Tree

The solar panel tree

I know, I know, I have MANY opinions, but this is one thing that really gets me going.

On Wellington Road in London Ontario, there is this , well lets call it what it is, .. blight on the visual landscape.... It's just the ugliest possible thing imaginable set right out there, "welcoming" visitors to our fair city. Don't get me wrong. I love the idea. As a concept, it's great. Somewhere though between design and execution, someone or more likely some committee, really failed to consider how it would actually look. The idea is that of a tree.. (we are the forest city), that collects solar power and sustains the information centre. Great concept, brilliant even, if you consider it as a conceptual public art piece. Just like leaves collect sunlight to convert into chlorophyll, to sustain the tree, this tree collects energy. Metaphorically, it's beautiful.

Why then is it so damn ugly?

Seriously, it's as if they had no one with any artistic sense at all involved with this project. The solar panels look like they are just stuck on top of the leaves with no concern if the leaves are even big enough to hold them. And really couldn't they have been recessed into the leaves, so that they were flush? Even that would have improved the appearance. The edges of the panels are silver, couldn't they have been painted to match the tree? Again, that could have helped make it look less "stuck on".  The panels just look like they don't fit. I realize that the ideal solution, making them leaf shaped must be either impractical or prohibitively expensive, but surely they could have applied some principle of design to improve it.

I don't know, it just gets me going every time I drive by it.

Love the concept, hate the finished product!