2024-05-02T18:34:03-04:00 https://archinect.com/features/article/91718/captain-concept-archinect-interviews-michael-jantzen katyatylevich 2009-09-04T14:50:00-04:00 >2018-01-30T06:16:04-05:00 <img src="https://archinect.gumlet.io/uploads/uc/ucvrou5twvhh8n8h.jpg?fit=crop&auto=compress%2Cformat&enlarge=true&w=1200" border="0" /><p> The artist and designer Michael Jantzen has added another structure to the surreal panorama made of his alternative-energy social and living spaces. This latest addition &mdash;Sun Rays Pavilion &mdash; is an oblique gathering area made of 12 precast concrete columns towering 150 feet tall. The Pavilion&rsquo;s flat roof, as it were, faces south. Glazed with photovoltaic film, the structure generates its own electricity, with some to spare &mdash; providing the local power grid with surplus energy. Large glass sections and doors keep the space ventilated.</p> <p> As it is with such projects, there are no production plans. Not yet, anyway. Nevertheless, in the fantastical landscape where many of Jantzen&rsquo;s concepts reside, Sun Rays Pavilion serves its purpose: it is a gathering space, after all, visited in no small part by bloggers and magazine readers; it further broaches exactly those questions and concerns Jantzen hoped it would. Besides, as Jantzen tells me, the fate of a realized structure may be even harde...</p>