Technology Impacts Architecture Impacts Living: Trombe’s Wall

Breakthrough technology is disruptive and can have a meaningful impact on one’s life. For instance, the electric car to transportation, or the Apple Watch that goes beyond mere time-telling. Yet it is uncommon for home design to be as impactful. Breakthrough technology is often a result of scientists creating solutions for problems that do not exist in everyday life. This was the case when Felix Trombe developed a solar mass for use in a home in the 1960s, but then never tested it in an actual homelife scenario. The technology was an elegant solution to a nonexistent problem: the scarcity of fossil fuel. It was shelved until the oil crisis arose in 1973.

On the heels of the oil crisis, a fringe following gathered behind Trombe’s science and a solar revolution became prophecy. Disciples evangelized that passive solar technology was going to change how people lived and how the planet could be saved. While active solar (photovoltaic — smart technology) was not yet viable, passive solar (mass — dumb solar) could be deployed immediately. Suddenly, and although having never been deployed commercially, architects, scientists, and historians believed Trombe’s wall was an antidote for the energy inefficiencies of a 1970s modern home.

Douglas Kelbaugh, a young and evolving architect, learned of the Trombe wall from one of the solar community’s many journals. Convinced of Trombe’s prescience, Kelbaugh designed a house for his family that fit itself around Trombe’s wall and which he believed would have a positive environmental impact. The Trombe wall met its design objective: maximized solar gain. Measured based on savings of fuel, Kelbaugh’s wall generated heating cost savings of 76% in 1975 and 84% in 1976.¹ However, this experiment would transcend his family as well as subsequent ones who would live in this home, and have a greater impact on lifestyle than on its ecological footprint. Trombe’s technology-driven passive solar architecture was not perfected.

Well documented over the past fifty years, nearly all publications have discussed the science behind the Kelbaugh House’s Trombe wall. Some even describe its beauty, yet none have so far documented what it meant to live with the wall, how occupants, including the Kelbaugh’s, needed to modify everyday living habits to inhabit the house. What became evident to the Kelbaugh family and subsequent owners was that you lived with the Trombe wall, rather than the other way round. The objective of this dissertation was not to discuss the wall’s science, but to illustrate what this entailed.

Living With the Wall

While much attention was paid to using a mass to store and convert energy to heat, little was paid to what living with this science required. Kelbaugh believed this was a problem not of architectural design. According to Kelbaugh, ‘…concern in planning his home was not…the solar‐heating system, but…good old-fashioned architectural problems, e.g., how to design a house that functions well as living quarters and looks attractive. I’m an architect first and a solar engineer second.’² In that regard he succeeded; the aesthetics of Kelbaugh’s house and not its science is what convinced all owners to purchase it. Subsequently, they had to change the way they lived in order to live with Trombe’s revolutionary technology.

Few instances of willing home lifestyle changes were identified during this research. What was unsurprisingly reconfirmed, however, was that homes need to provide refuge, a place where occupants turn to feel calm and safe. Home as a place to focus on family. All occupants felt burdened to ‘fix’ the discomfort which came at the cost of family time. By this measure, the Kelbaugh House failed. As some owners — like me — became obsessed, others moved on.

An owner of a house like the one designed by Kelbaugh could only find solace by having a willingness to embrace change, tolerate risk, be curious, be handy, and have a desire to be different. Even so, not even the willing always succeed — not even the original architect, Doug Kelbaugh. None of the Kelbaugh House’s owners anticipated how untested technology would change their lives as they became part of the experiment. Still, when asked, they all said they were proud to have been part of this.

In choosing the topic of living within a prototype home, I knew that an abundance of published technical data existed. I did not anticipate the absence of experiential data. Since my objective was to understand the subjective impact of Trombe wall technology on lifestyle, data had to be compiled. The research challenge was to find data that would not only be anecdotal, but could be substantiated. In the case of this document, stakeholder interviews did more than fill research gaps — they became the backbone of the narrative. Speaking with owners, trades people, and colleagues of Kelbaugh, it was remarkable how the tales fit seamlessly together. The Canadian Center for Architecture’s (CCA) Kelbaugh archive provided invaluable design data that helped frame the research. Most importantly though, was my intimate understanding of the structure. These collective experiences provided a visibility of the soft side of Trombe wall technology and its impact on residential living not found in traditional binary data.

Regardless of efficiency, had Trombe’s system been easy to live with, there would have been more Trombe wall houses built. But then time and technology moved on, disrupting previous technologies. More technical, expensive, elegant, and invisible than Trombe’s system, photovoltaic solar panels have become a desired feature of the conventional home. This technology works while being compatible with lifestyles. And because of this, Trombe’s wall will likely never be found in any new house in the future.