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community weblog
How King's College Added 438 Solar Panels to a 500-Year-Old Chapel
How King's College Added 438 Solar Panels to a 500-Year-Old Chapel. The project sparked debate over how to decrease carbon emissions while preserving the historic structure's architectural beauty.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries on May 08, 2024 at 8:08 PM
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Weird that an article about how this is going to mar the beauty of a historical building doesn't include any photo of the finished installation on the building.
From the one photo that they do have, it seems like they won't be visible from the ground at all.
Germany has been installing solar panels on top of red tile roofs for decades, and in some ways they make the cities more interesting.
I wish the US had a robust program of installing solar on every rooftop. It would really make a gigantic difference.
posted by hippybear at 8:12 PM
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Quoted historian guy: "They are, quite simply, another example of virtue-signaling."
No, they generate electricity.
posted by whatnotever at 9:00 PM
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Weird that an article about how this is going to mar the beauty of a historical building doesn't include any photo of the finished installation on the building.
Agreed. Here are three photos.
Also, it brings to mind another British college roof story told by Gregory Bateson and reprinted in The Next Whole Earth Catalog in 1980:
The Oak Beams Of New College, Oxford
"New College, Oxford, is of rather late foundation, hence the name. It was probably founded around the late 16th century. It has, like other colleges, a great dining hall with big oak beams across the top. These might be eighteen inched square, and twenty feet long.
"Some five to ten years ago, so I am told, a busy entomologist went up into the roof of the dining hall with a penknife and poked at the beams, and found that they were full of beetles. This was reported to the College Council, who met in some dismay, because where would they get beams of that caliber nowadays?
"One of the Junior Fellows stuck his neck out and suggested that there might be on College lands some oak. These colleges are endowed with pieces of land scattered across the country. So they called the College Forester, who of course had not been near the college itself for some years, and asked him about oaks.
"And he pulled his forelock and said, "Well sirs, we was wondering when you'd be askin'."
"Upon further inquiry it was discovered that when the College was founded, a grove of oaks had been planted to replace the beams in the dining hall when they became beetly, because oak beams always become beetly in the end. This plan had been passed down from one Forester to the next for four hundred years. "You don't cut them oaks. Them's for the College Hall."
"A nice story. That's the way to run a culture."
posted by fairmettle at 9:34 PM
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I wish the US had a robust program of installing solar on every rooftop. It would really make a gigantic difference.
It would be nice, but won't somebody think of the shareholders?!? I'm in Arizona and the utilities are doing everything they can to hinder rooftop solar. We got our system installed right under the wire before they ended net metering. They keep dropping buyback rates further and further. Rooftop installations are being denied in some areas. The investor-owned utilities spent a lot of money to get a favorable regulatory board and they've been getting a huge return on that investment.
Meanwhile, in July last year, the high in Phoenix was 110 or higher every single day that month. Climate change is here.
posted by azpenguin at 9:39 PM
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That third photo highlights that the panels can only be seen from a significant distance, far enough away that it'd be hard to tell them from the existing black surface of the roof. They're so inconspicuous that you could hardly describe them as a discernible signal, virtuous or otherwise.
A genuine win-win.
(Edited to add that if you factor in the annoyance it generates in the worst people, it's a win-win-win!)
posted by MarchHare at 9:39 PM
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(For the avoidance of any ambiguity, I am a big fan of the solar panels on top of Kings College, and I think that they have been installed in an architecturally sensitive and aesthetically sensitive way, and I say this as someone with a degree in Medieval and Early Modern History and a keen interest in preserving heritage buildings.)
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 10:20 PM
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Well that explains why it was under scaffolding for most of the past few years.
- local resident who never bothered to look up what they were actually doing to the building
posted by terretu at 10:55 PM
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We put some up at Edinburgh Castle a couple of years ago too! (well not me personally, but my colleagues)
posted by cpatterson at 11:07 PM
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Unfortunately the oak beams story in New College is not true.
posted by adrianhon at 12:40 AM
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fairmettle et al. - From Bateson's anecdote about an 500 year oak inventory, you may like [cw: fiction alert] Rudyard Kipling's An Habitation Enforced: the first short story in Actions and Reactions (1909) Gutenberg. It tells how an American couple buy an English ruin and 800 acres and find they have 800 years of heritage and family and responsibility into the bargain.
"All I say is that you can put up larch and make a temp'ry job of it; and by the time the young master's married it'll have to be done again. Now, I've brought down a couple of as sweet six-by-eight oak timbers as we've ever drawed. You put 'em in an' it's off your mind for good an' all. T'other way—I don't say it ain't right, I'm only just sayin' what I think—but t'other way, he'll no sooner be married than we'll 'ave it all to do again. You've no call to regard my words, but you can't get out of that."
adrianhon's not true Guardian story is i-dotting about the details but institutions used to play a long game. That's how they became institutions.
posted by BobTheScientist at 1:12 AM
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Here in Denmark, we have fleet-oaks. The are very real, I have visited some of them.
There are also some larches planted for similar purposes, around that time, but I can't find links (I know from walking my dog and seeing posters next to the larches).
posted by mumimor at 2:08 AM
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Anyway, it's a cool story. There are huge discussions among architects and conservationists about how to preserve and maintain historical buildings in this age, and I know too many people who are against any form of adaptation.
I regularly point to the Marcellus Theatre. If you want something to last 2000 years, you want to adapt it over time.
posted by mumimor at 2:12 AM
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Unfortunately the oak beams story in New College is not true.
Fortunately the Guardian story in adrianhon's link is not true.
Matt Dubuque: "I would simply point out that the story was originally related to Stewart Brand by our mutual mentor Gregory Bateson.
Gregory's father, William Bateson, was a renowned 19th century naturalist at Cambridge University who actually translated Mendel's work on breeding peas from the original work in German into English.
William Bateson also coined the term "genetics", in the early 1900s so this story of the oak beams comes from an extraordinarily distinguished line of British scientific family spanning centuries along the lines of the Darwins and the Huxleys.
The Batesons actually had leadership roles as dons of Cambridge dating back to 1762.
William Bateson started off specializing in insects and butterflies and likely recited the story to Gregory Bateson (who conveyed it to Stewart Brand and myself) after hearing it from his naturalist and insect studying colleagues at Oxford University.
Recall that this is a VERY small and distinguished community of entomological scholars at the time at Oxford and Cambridge and just because some accountant at Oxford had never heard of it proves nothing at all.
I stake my belief on the most honored traditions in Western science and the veracity and distinction of the Bateson family, one of the finest in the world.
The story is true. The Oxford bursar, despite his very vocal crusade, simply is not in the loop."
posted by fairmettle at 2:14 AM
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As a Cambridge resident I can confirm you cannot see the panels from the ground ( except maybe in the far distance). This is a great initiative and I like to think that if the original builders had access to solar power they would 100% have put panels on the roof on day 1
posted by crocomancer at 2:37 AM
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MetaFilter: just because some accountant at Oxford had never heard of it proves nothing at all; oak beams always become beetly in the end
posted by chavenet at 2:41 AM
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Heritage professional here; installation of solar panels on roofs of culturally significant buildings is a very controversial subject and there isn't an easy answer. There are as many ways to do it badly as to do it well. But it's only ever a matter of degree, since, remember, the electric lights inside the building are also an intrusive accretion that affects the way the public experiences the traditional structure.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 4:51 AM
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I'm still snickering at the ring-wing nut who is aghast at "virtue-signaling" at a church as if that building was otherwise strictly functional, not to mention the religion in question holds that humans are supposed to take care of the earth. No, it's not replacing a power plant but symbols matter and these are especially useful for pushing older people to accept that change is both inevitable and fine.
posted by adamsc at 5:22 AM
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As per my original link, the source of the refutation is not "some accountant" or a male Oxford bursar, but the college's archivist Jennifer Thorp.
posted by adrianhon at 5:56 AM
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The New York Times article has one good photo.
posted by doctornemo at 5:56 AM
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Weird that an article about how this is going to mar the beauty of a historical building doesn't include any photo of the finished installation on the building.
Very annoying. But the NYT article linked in the original does have photos.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 5:58 AM
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So it's also the distinction between history and heritage; pure historians aren't necessarily trained to appreciate that conservation efforts and the heritage movement (going back to the Athens Charter in 1931, or earlier) are almost exactly virtue signalling, an active effort by societies to preserve elements of their world which are significant to culture. Virtue signalling can be a good and admirable thing.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 6:00 AM
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I'd rather those panels be in a green field somewhere or on a Tesco. We don't have to cover every square foot of our buildings with solar panels.
posted by torokunai at 7:05 AM
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I'd rather those panels be in a green field somewhere
Why would take away more green space for solar panels when we have perfectly good non green space that isn't covered in panels? Honestly who cares about a roof? Especially, as Fiasco da Gama pointed out, the buildings have already been significantly altered to add modern things like electricity and heating.
posted by Uncle at 7:17 AM
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I don't think I have the same definition of virtue signaling that some people in this thread are using. I thought it was making a token effort towards a value that makes you look good instead of making a significant effort. That would be the opposite of 'an active effort by societies to preserve elements of their world which are significant to culture.' Am I misunderstanding the concept?
posted by bq at 7:20 AM
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Yah, the lack of photos is really annoying. I did an image search, and apparently all the photos have been off the roof taken by someone standing on the roof, or by a drone. Stupid. I'm not going to be flying a drone as a visitor. From what I can tell of how the roof lies, if you're standing on the ground looking up, you wouldn't even be able to see them. Not sure if there are tall enough buildings that you could look over or above and see them, but then you're looking at a roof anyway, so panels aren't going to really ruin the aesthetics. Hooray solar.
Now put solar on ever GD warehouse and big box store as that certainly won't ruin those beautiful facades.
posted by BlueHorse at 8:12 AM
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I don't think I have the same definition of virtue signaling that some people in this thread are using. I thought it was making a token effort towards a value that makes you look good instead of making a significant effort. That would be the opposite of 'an active effort by societies to preserve elements of their world which are significant to culture.' Am I misunderstanding the concept?
People getting mad about it goes to show how useful acts like this can be. It's a chapel, symbolism is like 80% of the reason why it exists in the first place.
posted by BungaDunga at 9:07 AM
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Not sure if there are tall enough buildings that you could look over or above and see them
You might be able to see them from the tower of Great St Mary's, just across the way. I think it is slightly higher than the chapel but I am not sure, it's been a few years since I was there.
posted by antiwiggle at 9:20 AM
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also that historian wrote about virtue signalling in the Spectator, which is basically the Tory party magazine. He also writes columns about, let's see, how James Cook wasn't so bad, why the Ghanaian crown jewels shouldn't be returned, "Was the Black Death Racist?", Netflix's Cleopatra being played by a Black actor, why the Aboriginal spears brought back by Captain Cook shouldn't be returned, why the Rosetta Stone shouldn't be returned, and how "conservatives are the new radicals on campus."
posted by BungaDunga at 9:26 AM
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I don't think I have the same definition of virtue signaling that some people in this thread are using. I thought it was making a token effort towards a value that makes you look good instead of making a significant effort. That would be the opposite of 'an active effort by societies to preserve elements of their world which are significant to culture.' Am I misunderstanding the concept?
The older usage wasn't so purely negative: it's always had the sense of being a public assertion that you support some shared value but as Fiasco de Gama observed that can be positive. Saying that you are a good Christian by building or preserving a beautiful church definitely has some level of self-serving but it also gives the community something of cultural significance.
In the mid-2010s this was almost completely co-opted by right-wing political activists to be entirely negative as a way of saying that anything they didn't agree with was being done only to score political points and otherwise has no value. This is, of course, raging projection as no group on earth is more concerned with public displays of political loyalty which are pointless or even counterproductive but someone using the term non-ironically in this decade is almost always indicating that they spend time in that media environment.
posted by adamsc at 9:33 AM
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One fun thing about virtue signalling is that the argument can work in both directions. Suppose King's College pays for rooftop solar on some other roofs instead: they can be scolded for "not putting in the work" and outsourcing the problem to other people's roofs. "Ah, you see? Rooftop solar must be such a pain in the ass that King's College won't do it themselves! Clearly, this is virtue signalling. Wake me up when they deign to put rooftop solar on their own buildings."
posted by BungaDunga at 9:35 AM
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We an estimate for getting solar panels on our house, which is in a small town in the burbs of Cleveland. The house lies on 8 acres, most of which is wooded except for 3 acres around the house itself. Last week the solar panel supplier took the drawing to the city hall to get a building permit, which was rejected based on the panels being visible from the street, about 1/8 of a mile away and mostly hidden from view due to trees. They said that the city doesn't allow for houses to show any solar panels on the roof facing the street. Of course, the orientation of the panels wrt optimal sun exposure is very important, so the panels can't just be relocated to the other side of the house. We went to the monthly council meeting to file a variance, but it was unanimously rejected by the council. This town also prides itself on the natrual beauty of the environs in which there are ample wooded areas and rules about avoiding overdevelopment. We are heartbroken and frustrated, but alas, I guess we live in the wrong town.
posted by waving at 9:47 AM
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It's weird that solar panels on a modern roof are considered inherently uglier than the roof itself.
posted by suelac at 10:09 AM
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Not sure if there are tall enough buildings that you could look over or above and see them
If you want to get into the detail, it's worth looking at the report (pdf) submitted to the Cambridge City Council planning committee. Basically: (1) the chapel roofs are low-pitched and partially hidden by parapets, so the solar panels are inconspicuous from ground level, though (2) they can be seen from some angles. e.g. from the south end of King's Parade, and (3) they are clearly visible from the tower of Great St Mary's, a popular place for tourists to get a panoramic view of the Cambridge skyline.
The solar panels are hardly an eyesore. Their visual impact is arguably very small (though not negligible). On the other hand, so is their environmental benefit (an estimated 1.4% of the college's total carbon emissions). I know everything these days has to be framed in culture-war terms as a battle between the forces of Woke and the forces of Reaction, but really that's not the issue here. Ultimately it was a trade-off between a modest cost and a modest benefit.
posted by verstegan at 2:02 PM
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We don't have to cover every square foot of our buildings with solar panels.
Why on earth not? It is the best place for them.
posted by hydropsyche at 2:18 PM
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It's not really the signalling part that bothers these people.
The ones who moan the loudest about "virtue signalling" do it because they're always out to prove that nobody ever actually does anything for good reasons, that everyone is truly just selfish and at best only pretending to be good, because that's how they justify their own behaviour to themselves.
It's not that they want virtue to happen quietly and humbly; it's that they'd prefer to believe that virtue doesn't really exist at all.
Avoiding "virtue signalling" just helps them maintain and spread that worldview. Don't fall for it.
posted by automatronic at 6:44 AM
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