ABSTRACT
This chapter tells the story of how my work as a physicist at Livermore National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, where the USA’s nuclear bombs are designed, moved to the field of passive design components for architecture through two main projects, “Low-E glazing” and “Cloud Gel,” and how these two inventions consequently became a combined system called “Weather Panel.” These projects are founded on my background expertise in reading and thinking with molecular structures, and on the influence that Harold Hay, Steve Baer and others had on my development as a passive energy inventor. Weather Panel performance became a translation of Hay’s roofpond system. The mechanical design performing through moving insulation was replaced with molecular design performing through transparent insulation and thermo-optical shutter glazing. The moving parts are molecules and electrons rather than bulky insulating panels. But the system is clearly a direct transformation of his passive energy design concept.
