Design approaches and typologies of adaptive facades: A review: Fid-Bau Portal

Design approaches and typologies of adaptive facades: A review

Tabadkani, Amir / Roetzel, Astrid / Li, Hong Xian / Tsangrassoulis, Aris

Abstract The most ambitious challenge for designers is an effective shading system that is able to keep the balance between the daylight harvesting and view out maximization while minimizing discomfort risks and building's energy load. In the literature, several definitions exist for an adaptive façade and many terminologies were introduced and used interchangeably. Therefore, this paper aims to distinguish the existing adaptive system typologies based on their key characteristics. In addition, a review based on a systematic search is conducted to outline possible design approaches towards non-conventional adaptive facades (AFs) through simulations at early stage of design. As the main research outcome, most of the studies evaluated indoor daylighting level and discomfort glare through parametric tools, while none of them proposed a specific control strategy to predict non-conventional adaptive facades' performance. These observations emphasize existing research gaps in this field that can affect the applicability of such facades in real practices.

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Highlights • Ten adaptive typologies with their specific characteristics were identified from the literature. • Three design approaches towards non-conventional adaptive facades were explored through a critical analysis. • None of the studies investigated view to outdoor or thermal comfort in details. • None of the studies proposed a control strategy to verify the performance of non-conventional adaptive façades. • Algorithmic and parametric tools such as Grasshopper was the most used simulation interface to develop such facades.