BERKELEY, Calif. -- Some of failed solar firm Solyndra LLC's investments are finding new life in an art installation at the University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley, high in the hills near Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The installation includes a small wooden structure next to a babbling brook in the gardens. One wall is studded with 1,368 narrow glass tubes arranged in a wave pattern. The SOL Grotto, by architects Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello, is meant to evoke the sun as well as the tubes' former owner, Solyndra, which declared bankruptcy last year after receiving a $535 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy.

University of California, Berkeley, professor Rael provided some insight into the husband-and-wife team's creative process.

The sculpture SOL Grotto, made by architects Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello from tubes once owned by Solyndra, manipulates sunlight, air and sound. Photo by Matthew Millman.

"Part of making art is you make something that people can draw different meanings from," Rael said. "So we had intentions about lots of things: about the quality of light, the way it feels, the coolness of the air, the darkness, the reflections, also where the material's coming from, how it's organized, what the surface is made of."

He added, "You appreciate the technological aspect of it. All these glass rods were made for a company that went bankrupt."

That facet hasn't been lost on members of the Republican-led House Energy and Commerce Committee, which took aim at the project this week in a news release that pegged it among the nation's most expensive works of art.

"[T]he amount taxpayers forked over with little to see in return except for the 'SOL Grotto' would make this piece of art shatter the previous record" of $250 million paid for Paul Cézanne's "The Card Players," committee Republicans said.

The artists, however, got the material for free from San Jose-based supply chain contractor JIT Transportation, which was left with about 8 million glass tubes it had shipped for Solyndra to make its trademark cylindrical solar modules when the company went bankrupt.

The tubes were deemed worthless in Solyndra's bankruptcy proceedings, said JIT President Gene Ashley, so he offered them to whoever would take them. He sent most of them to recyclers in Utah but still has about 800,000 left.

"I've got another guy in Carmel Valley, he's taken maybe a couple thousand of them" to make a chandelier, he said. And other companies have more of the rods, he said. "I'm going to guess there's over 20 million of those tubes out there in multiple locations throughout Northern California."

Ashley said he had been wary of doing business with Solyndra. "We were reluctant to do anything on a large scale with them because it just seemed they were burning up the cash real fast," he said. But President Obama's visit to Solyndra in May 2010 helped convince him, he said. "If someone at the level of the president of the United States is going to come out there and shut the place down for a day and talk about how great it's going to be, you've got to have your ducks in a row before you do that."

The sculpture, seen here from the outside, is part of a larger exhibition called "Natural Discourse: Artists, Architects, Scientists & Poets in the Garden." Photo by Matthew Millman.

For visitors yesterday to the garden in Berkeley, the project's provenance wasn't the main attraction.

"I love this exhibit," said Berkeley resident Ann Saxby. "You look at the green on the ends, and then if you look at the beginning, where it comes out of the black, sometimes this shadow color pink comes up." She said she had heard of Solyndra but hadn't followed it closely.

Gerry Meares, visiting from Eureka, Ill., also enjoyed it. "I think art is in the eye of the beholder," she said. "I think this is fantastic."

Garden Director Paul Licht said he had plans to sell some glass tubes in the garden gift shop. "Some people want to make it controversial," he said of the project. They should focus on the project's sustainability, if anything, he said. "What should be politicized is the concept of recycling."

Rael said he and San Fratello had considered about eight designs before settling on the cavelike structure.

They had originally envisioned allowing people to spend the night in the room, but the discovery of cougar droppings near the site put an end to that plan.