Some façades shade.
Some façades produce energy.
This one stores it.
At TU Delft’s Bucky Lab, a student team explored a concept that feels almost too simple to be true: using gravity as a battery. The project GESS_what translates Gravitational Energy Storage Systems (GESS) into a façade-integrated solution – turning the building envelope into an active energy device.
The principle is beautifully direct.
When surplus energy is available – for instance from integrated PV panels – the system lifts a weight. Energy is stored as potential energy. When needed, the weight is lowered again, driving a generator.
No chemistry. No rare materials.
Just mass, height, and time.
What makes this project compelling is not only the idea itself, but where it happens: in the façade. The system becomes visible. The slow movement of the weights turns energy storage into something you can actually read on the building – almost like a living section of its energy profile.
Technically, the proposal is modular and scalable. Each unit combines a structural frame, lifting mechanism, and guide system, allowing integration into both new constructions and retrofit scenarios. Coupled with BIPV, the façade shifts from passive skin to active infrastructure.
And then there is the architectural layer.
Because movement creates expression.
The façade no longer hides performance — it shows it.
A building that quietly lifts and lowers its own energy.
Project team
Students: Athanasios Svarnas, Hari Krishnan Subramanian, Kayla Plada Sanchez, Krishna Koushik Venigalla, Sana Hafsa
Supervisors: Dr.-Ing. Marcel Bilow, Ir. Nadia Remmerswaal, Ir. Hugo Nagtzaam
A prototype, of course.
But also a clear statement: storage doesn’t have to sit in a basement. It can shape the face of architecture, but we also have to discuss its performance, the students figured out that ideally the entire facade should be covered …
facadeworld 