European architect André Brössel has come up with an alternative way to harvest solar energy to the solar panel:  an enormous glass ball that focuses sunlight (and possibly moonlight) to a concise point to gather energy.  It’s mostly gotten people excited because it’s not only supposed to be more efficient than many solar panels, but it just LOOKS SO PRETTY:

image taken from designboom.com

Many places are claiming these balls are large enough to harvest energy from moonlight, but one of my engineer friends says it’s a pretty large claim.  As far as I can tell, they are still in the early stages of fully figuring out the limits of the design system, but there’s already a great amount of interest in utilizing the final product in buildings and spaces where design is just as important as function.  If they are, in fact, more efficient than solar panels, expect to start seeing these EVERYWHERE!

Want to know more?  See more photos and read information about the balls here.

Poking the corners,

Jenna