Against a backdrop of climate change, inflation, and armed conflict, the global energy system is undergoing change and facing scrutiny. As stated by the United Nations, buildings must be heated, lit, and electrified through clean, accessible, affordable, sustainable, and reliable power sources. Architecture and urban planning can contribute both to expanding energy access and to exploring different forms of storage. The Toronto-based startup Civic Grid designs and builds energy storage systems with the aim of changing the relationship communities have with the electrical power behind everyday life. Their first architectural battery was designed as public architecture by architects Jack Self and Josh Harskamp with industrial designer Max Fine. The prototype is the evolution of a deployable energy system developed with Lisbon Civil Defence for the Lisbon Architecture Triennale 2025, still in operation, and is paired with a scale model.

Urban systems obtain energy from different types of sources. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), conventional or grid-based sources include fossil fuel-based grid electricity, such as coal, natural gas, and oil, and nuclear power via national grids. Renewable energy captures energy embedded in natural processes, such as solar photovoltaic and solar thermal energy, wind power, hydropower, geothermal energy, and biomass and waste-to-energy through municipal solid waste incineration and biogas. Other emerging technologies are also being explored, including green hydrogen and battery and grid-scale energy storage. It is in this last category that the prototype designed by Civic Grid architects Jack Self and Josh Harskamp falls.