Concept → Reality · Rewritten

When Toyota planted solar flowers in the city

In the summer of 2009, five steel flowers up to 18 feet tall appeared on a Boston plaza, offering shade, seats, Wi-Fi and a place to charge a laptop. They were an advertisement for a car, and they pointed to a kind of street furniture that cities later bought for real.

The Design Blog editors

One of Toyota’s solar flowers on its 2009 tour, with Prius signs on its leaves

One of Toyota’s Prius solar flowers on its July 2009 stop in New York. AI-retouched from an image by alan miles, CC BY 2.0.

Verdict 2026

Shown, not shipped

Toyota’s solar Wi-Fi flowers were built and shown in Boston in July 2009 to launch the third-generation Prius, then toured other US cities, New York among them; they were never sold. The idea behind them, solar-powered public seating where you can charge a phone, did reach streets through the Strawberry Tree in Serbia and Soofa benches in Boston.

LuminAID Max 2-in-1 Solar Lantern & Phone ChargerClosest thing you can buyLuminAID Max 2-in-1 Solar Lantern & Phone Charger7.4Design ratingPacks flat, inflates into a floating lanternCheck priceOur design review ↓

The idea today

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The flowers are gone, but a small solar object that lights a table and tops up a phone fits in a bag.

  • LuminAID Max 2-in-1 Solar Lantern & Phone Charger

    LuminAID Max 2-in-1 Solar Lantern & Phone Charger

    A flat-packing inflatable lantern with a solar panel on top and a USB port to charge a phone, the flowers’ idea at pocket scale.

    Our design review

    7.4Design rating
    Form8.0
    Material7.4
    Detail6.9
    Longevity7.1

    LuminAID folds a light, a battery and a solar panel into a TPU pillow that packs to about an inch thick and inflates to a 6-inch cube that floats. It is rated IP67 and has a USB port to top up a phone. A reviewer at Red Around the World found the protruding valve stops it lying flat and the cap is fiddly to open. LuminAID quotes 16 to 20 hours of direct sun for a full charge, so the panel is a backup, not a fast charger.

    Strongest point
    Packs flat, inflates into a floating lantern
    Compromise
    Protruding valve and slow solar recharge
    Check price on Amazon
  • MPOWERD Luci Solar String Lights + Phone Charger

    MPOWERD Luci Solar String Lights + Phone Charger

    Eighteen feet of LED string lights that charge from a compact solar puck, which doubles as a power bank.

    Our design review

    7.3Design rating
    Form7.8
    Material7.0
    Detail7.4
    Longevity6.8

    The string lives inside its own charger: a round solar puck that collapses to about two inches and stores 18 feet of braided nylon cord carrying 20 warm white LEDs. One button steps through three brightness levels, a second shows the battery level, and a covered USB port turns the puck into a power bank. OutdoorGearLab liked the even, warm glow but rated brightness modest at 100 lumens. MPOWERD quotes 16 hours of direct sun for a full solar charge, and the battery is sealed.

    Strongest point
    Solar base doubles as the cord’s case
    Compromise
    Slow solar charge, sealed battery
    Check price on Amazon

Product images from the retailer listings, cut out and staged with AI.

  1. 2009The third-generation Prius debuts at the North American International Auto Show in January, with an optional solar-powered ventilation system.
  2. 2009Five solar flowers, up to 18 feet tall, stand on Boston’s Prudential Plaza from July 8 to 19, offering free Wi-Fi and charging. The tour then moves on; by July 22 the flowers are photographed in New York.
  3. 2010Strawberry Energy installs the Strawberry Tree, a free public solar charger for phones, in Obrenovac, Serbia, in late 2010.
  4. 2013Two solar Seat-E prototypes from an MIT Media Lab team go up on Boston’s Rose Kennedy Greenway in the fall.
  5. 2014Boston expands the project to six Soofa benches in four parks, each with USB charging and environmental sensors.

What it was

In July 2009, Toyota put five giant flowers on Prudential Plaza in Boston. They stood up to 18 feet tall, and each had seating for up to 10 people at its base. Flexible solar cells on the petals fed batteries stored in the seats, which powered outlets for phones and laptops. The flower heads carried wireless internet nodes, and colored LEDs lit them at night.

The flowers were designed and fabricated by the studio Poetic Kinetics. They were part of the launch of the third-generation Prius under the slogan "Harmony Between Man, Nature and Machine." The link to the car was specific: the new Prius offered a roof-mounted solar panel that ran a fan to cool the parked car. After Boston, the installations were set to tour New York, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles. All five flowers broke down to fit into a single truck.

Spectacle draws a crowd for a summer. Infrastructure has to look ordinary.

Where the idea went

The flowers themselves were a campaign prop. They were made to promote a car, and we found no record of them being sold or returning to the street after the tour. The question they raised was better than the answer: why can’t a public seat give you power and a connection?

Other designers answered it at street scale. In late 2010, Miloš Milisavljević and his organization Strawberry Energy installed the Strawberry Tree in Obrenovac, Serbia, a solar charging station with sixteen cables for different phones. He had conceived it at 17 as a school project. It logged about 10,000 charges in its first 40 days, and more units followed in Belgrade, Novi Sad and other towns.

In Boston, the same city that hosted the flowers, an MIT Media Lab team placed two solar Seat-E prototypes on the Rose Kennedy Greenway in fall 2013. By summer 2014 there were six Soofa benches in four parks, each with USB ports and environmental sensors. The spinoff, based in Cambridge, now mainly sells the Soofa Sign, a solar-powered e-paper display for neighborhood news and transit times.

What it means now

The flowers were sculpture with outlets. The products that followed were benches and poles with modest panels, built to sit outdoors through winter. Boston’s own report on the Soofa pilot noted that people needed signs to discover the charging at all.

The lesson is a plain one for public design. A solar object can draw a crowd for a summer as spectacle. To stay for years, it has to look like ordinary furniture and work like infrastructure.

The original post, summarized

Our July 2009 post covered Toyota’s solar flowers, up to 18 feet tall, which offered seats, free Wi-Fi and gadget charging in Boston as part of the launch of the third-generation Prius, before touring other US cities. It is summarized here rather than republished.

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