The sun has been central to the proliferation of the human civilisation—whether as a source of power, inspiration, divinity or even joy, apart from ordering our diurnal cycles. It is, after all, Earth's sui generis position—just about optimal—in relationship to the celestial body that made life possible on the planet, with the source of that divinity often being equated to enlightenment, holiness and well-being. These connotations, coupled with a conscientious appeal to move towards cleaner energy and sustainable design drawn from solar resources, undergird the second edition of the Solar Biennale, Soleil.s. The project was initiated in 2022 by solar designers Pauline van Dongen and Marjan van Aubel with the inaugural edition of the Solar Biennale at the Het Nieuwe Instituut rethinking design approaches to Europe's energy crisis. For the second iteration, the biennale expands its scope, showcasing a "joyous, transdisciplinary exhibition" which is currently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts (mudac) in Lausanne, Switzerland.

For millennia, humans have worshipped the sun in one form or another. In pagan cultures and mythologies, the Sun was central to fables of creation and was believed to have divine powers and healing abilities. Further, in the Middle Ages—and persisting in some cultures to this day—sovereigns would name themselves under the authority of the Sun as the divine ruler of a country's populace. It was only with the advent of industrialisation and rationalist thinking that this forbearing relationship transformed into one defined by resource and extraction. This culture of extraction and dependence on fossil fuels would further directly result in ozone layer depletion, turning a nurturing force destructive. Soleil.s makes this transition abundantly clear, asking if there were ways we could counter the destruction incited by an anthropocentric world.

The exhibition at the design museum is ordered by the Earth’s movement around the Sun as well, starting on the day of the spring equinox (March 21) and ending with the autumn equinox (September 21)—the half-year period during which the Northern Hemisphere experiences the most sunlight. It brings together specially commissioned works by contemporary designers and artists who consider the symbolic, political, practical and aesthetic dimensions of our relationship to the sun, as well as projects from mudac’s archives. Apart from an expansive showcase at mudac, the biennale also includes three exhibitions in partnership with EPFL: Sun Shines on Architecture, organised at Archizoom, and From Solar to Nocturnal and Halos, which present four new works by artists who were part of the Enter the Hyper Scientific program.

Designers displaying works at mudac not only envision futures powered by solar energy, but also ask what a world without sunlight might look like. Interspersed with these, photographs, immersive installations, films and video artworks provide insight into the ways in which sunlight is integral to our lives that often go unnoticed. For the major design exhibition, 10 designers whose work centres around sustainability, digital technology and speculative futures have presented special projects alongside works by Olafur Elìasson, Liam Young, Andreas Gursky, DISNOVATION.ORG and Solar Protocol. "As curators, we aimed to highlight how solar design goes beyond energy innovation, challenging us to rethink our relationship with health, politics, urbanism and inclusivity," the curators, Rafaël Santianez and Scott Longfellow, note in the official release.

Soleil.s, at the museum in Lausanne, opens by plummeting visitors into a world that only has artificial light. One of the specially commissioned projects, Have a Nice Day by Madrid and Toronto-based research studio Common Accounts, in the centre of the exhibition space, challenges visitors to think about the substitutes present technologies can devise to replace the star’s massive energy, and what an existence under artificial radiation might look like. The installation is a woven structure, composed of mechanical and industrial elements with artificial light sources that act as a quasi-sun, an altogether eerie (but on the split-side, hopeful) prospect.

On a similar tangent, French design studio Vraiment Vraiment, in collaboration with EPFL professor Marilyne Andersen, take the idea of the sun and natural light as a resource to an unsavoury conclusion. With their interactive installation Droit au Jour (Right to day), they ask visitors to think about their right to daylight, if one was to even consider thinking of it as a reinforceable right to begin with. They construct a fictional future where access to daylight is controlled by an administration that ensures citizens’ well-being. The work foregrounds concerns over SAD (seasonal affective disorder), caused by lack of access to natural light, as well as urbanisation, light pollution and the disruption of our natural cycles by digital technology and demanding schedules. Andersen has another immersive artwork in the show that touches upon similar themes, Circa Diem 2.0.

A complement to such speculation is presented in Alice Bucknell's science fiction documentary on view in the exhibition space, Staring at the Sun. Within a digital world, Bucknell depicts ongoing research projects that explore solar geoengineering. Liam Young’s After the End explores a similar narrative. Both look at the possibilities and challenges posed for a smooth transition to clean energies like solar power.

While it nurtures, as the climate crisis has made abundantly clear, the sun has also proved to be a major destructive force for hundreds (if not thousands) of years. What alternatives to our dependence on fossil fuels can we imagine to combat the adverse effects of our actions? And will these depend solely on humanity's technological capabilities? Is there a way we can think about working symbiotically with the natural world to create a new order of being? EcoLogicStudio, a London-based practice focused on the intersections between biotechnology and the built environment, considers this in their diorama in the showcase, CryoflorE: on cyber gardening the city. For the utopian vision for the city, the designers imagine a world in which buildings are inhabited by humans alongside algae and cyanobacteria. The microorganisms capture carbon and generate energy, creating a loop that integrates and fosters biodiversity, instead of eliminating it.

Similarly, moving away from anthropocentric concerns, Fellaria’s Time Capsule by Spanish architects TAKK is an installation designed to symbolise a time-travelling machine. The machine, fitted with lamps and reflective surfaces to mimic the solar spectrum and radiation, and an irrigation system, is meant to be able to provide safe passage to the flora placed within it, to an improbable future. The seemingly makeshift design not only reveals the amount of effort it would take to replace the sun, but also reveals the potential drawbacks of technological power (that act as both solution and deterrent to the future). Highlighting the tenuous nature of our interactions with the sun as a source of energy, it also asks what happens when life is no longer sustainable by solar energy alone. While this is a valid concern, it is also worth noting the inequalities that already exist when we think about issues such as global warming. While the Global South is far more susceptible to the adverse impacts of a burning world, countries in the region are expected to equally contribute to decelerating their reliance on fossil fuels. How such disparities affect projections for grand schemes of the future is a question incumbent upon these displays.

The largely speculative nature of the exhibition is, in this instance, also worth noting. While it leaves interpretation of works up to the visitor, it also, in a sense, obscures the realities of these unequal relationships. An example is a video game developed specifically for the biennale by Floating Point Studio that produces a speculative narrative that asks visitors to think about their role in facilitating a greener tomorrow. Visitors to the show can interact with people in the game, set in the near future, making choices that affect the player’s ability to access food, transport and housing. What’s further worth mentioning for an exhibition of this nature is the interactive ways in which it engages audiences, thinking through the future not only theoretically but also through simulations.

The almost mystical relationship of the sun to life is another vital thread that unravels the showcase’s message. Various works dwell on our cyclical relationship to the sun and how that has been altered in today’s technologically determined age, and vitally reflect on the climate crisis. We are all willing victims to heliotropism (at least until global warming trends allow). So much so that our built environment is largely construed as a response to the sun. Placards and photographs on display detail the potency of sunlight in regulating modernist morphologies, with the design of sanatoriums centred around the idea of patients being exposed to sunlight as per a regimented timetable.

The central role of creation that the sun plays out is highlighted symbolically in Vienna-based mischer'traxler studio's The Idea of a Tree and Nicky Assmann's The Abysses of the Scorching Sun. For their dynamic project, mischer'traxler studio has created a machine that responds to sunlight to create a piece of furniture. It only starts working when the sun comes up and immediately stops at sundown. The density and colour of the layers it creates in a day are also affected by the quality of sunlight. On the other hand, Assmann's projection device for The Abysses of the Scorching Sun gives a pattern to the movement of the sun. A machine generates colourful rays, evoking the image of a storm, meant to symbolise the sun’s activities. Commenting on the immediate ways in which sunlight orders how we practice architecture, TAKK has another installation created for the exhibition, Kaleidoscopic Tent. Defined by perforated tensile fabrics, it reinterprets the traditional mashrabiya, drawing attention to the play of shadows, and in turn light's interaction with solidity.

Of late, exhibitions that centre nature, whether focusing on water, soil or the lives of animals—entities normally without a voice—have gained traction in major museums and biennale programmes. They position biodiversity not only as vital to humanity but also as sentient agents with their own spheres of influence and action. Such shows become a way to decentralise a largely anthropocentric perspective, emphasising that life on Earth is a network of interconnected relationships. And perhaps the one agent that has sustained it for this long is the sun, Soleil.s underscores.

We've tracked our lives around the sun, we’ve drawn energy from the sun, we've even ordered our built worlds to protect us from it. This only implies that everything we do towards creating a more sustainable world today will, in some way, factor in the question of solar power. As the curators reiterate, "This collaboration underscores the power of design to shift mindsets and inspire collective pathways to ecological futures.” Eventually, everyone shall have their day under the sun.