Shape Shifting Buildings

Adaptive building facade design

(October 2022)

The atmospheric conditions around buildings change during the day and over the seasons since we are surrounded by a dynamic atmosphere. The sun moves from sunrise to sunset, and over the year too, while atmospheric conditions change seasonally. On top of that climate change patterns are being modified due to human activity which will alter the livability of the places we inhabit around the world. So why still we should conceive buildings as static entities, unable to cope with these climatic alterations?

During the development of a three-hour workshop, I taught the students the basics of how computational design could be used to produce buildings able to change their solar access behaviour to introduce parameters that will help them to mitigate excessive solar exposure. This workflow will allow building design to be more energy efficient lowering Energy demands relative to Air conditioning with can represent almost 50% of the general energy demand of a building when located in warm climates.

Over the workshop session, we went through the following concepts:

●        Understanding the basics climate data-driven geometries, and Net Zero architectures

●        Optimization and benchmark of bioclimatic designs to reduce operational carbon footprint.

●        Steps to create a kinetic facade project at conceptual level, using environmental analysis to inform the design decision-making.