Smart building skins

Lecture-01
Environmental Responsive Technologies
Architecture Department
CECOS University Peshawar

Ar. M.Tariq
MS Env. Design (AIOU cont.)
Responsive architecture
• Responsive architectures are those that measure actual
environmental conditions (via sensors) to enable buildings to
adapt their form, shape, color or character responsively (via
actuators).
An Energy-Producing Algae Facade
• The world's first building to be powered entirely by algae is being
piloted in Hamburg, Germany, by engineering firm Arup.
• The "bio-adaptive facade", which Arup says is the first of its kind, uses
live microalgae growing in glass louvres to generate renewable energy
and provide shade at the same time.
• Installed in the BIQ building as part of the International Building
Exhibition, the algae are continuously supplied with liquid nutrients
and carbon dioxide via a water circuit running through the facade.
• When they are ready to be harvested they are transferred as a thick
pulp to the technical room inside the building and fermented in a
biogas plant.
A Light-Responsive Facade That "Breathes"
• This pair of Abu Dhabi towers are sheathed in a thin skin of glass—
fashionable, but not ideal for the desert climate.
• So the architects at Aedas designed a special, secondary sun screen
that deflects some of the glare without permanently blocking the
views. Thanks to a series of faceted fiberglass rosettes—based on
traditional Islamic mashrabiya—which open and close in response to
the temperature of the facade.
• “At night they will all fold, so they will all close, so you’ll see more of
the facade,"
A Facade That Eats Smog
• Back in 2011, the chemical company Alcoa unveiled a remarkable
technology that could clean the air around it.
• The material contained titanium dioxide, which effectively "scrubbed"
the air of toxins by releasing spongy free radicals that could eliminate
pollutants.
• The stuff has made appearances on streets, clothing, and architecture
since then—most recently, on the sun screen of a new Mexico City
hospital, the Torre de Especialidades.
• The hospital is cloaked in a 300-foot-long skin of Prosolve370e tiles,
developed by a German firm called Elegant Embellishments
• The technology is based on the same process: As air filters around the
sponge-shaped structures, UV-light-activated free radicals destroy any
existing pollutants, leaving the air cleaner for the patients inside.
A Metal Mesh That Reacts to Heat
• Bloom, a temporary installation by USC architecture professor Doris
Kim Sung, isn't technically a facade. But it's not long before a similar
technique is used in buildings.
• Sung's research deals with biomimetics, or how architecture can
mimic the human body. This sun shade was made with
thermobimetal—a material that's actually a laminate of two different
metals, each with its own thermal expansion coefficient.
• That means that each side reacts differently to sunlight, expanding
and contracting at different rates—causing tension between the two
surfaces, and ultimately, a curling effect.