Design Research on Climate-Responsive Building Skins from Prototype and Case Study Perspectives: Fid-Bau Portal

Design Research on Climate-Responsive Building Skins from Prototype and Case Study Perspectives

Lin, Zhenghao / Song, Yehao

As low-carbon and sustainable development has become a global trend, climate-responsive building envelopes still gain traction in the architecture world. However, relevant design and research remain too disconnected to drive further breakthroughs. Thus, this chapter explores an integrated design-research approach for climate-responsive building skinsBuilding skin, especially for the continental climatesContinental climatesin ChinaChina. The study begins with a practical case in China'sChina Cold Zone to demonstrate how architects consider climate responsivenessClimate responsiveness when designing building skinsBuilding skin and reveal the challenges the static structures might face in responding to external dynamic climates. A research prototype of climate-responsive skin was extracted from the Cold Zone case and materialized in a full-scale test platform. A series of comparative experiments are performed to identify the optimal solution for each of the four key design features and their optimal combinations for summer and winter, respectively. The thermal performance impact of each design feature and the energy-saving behaviors of the seasonal optimal configurations are also evaluated quantitatively. In order to integrate the highly differential summer and winter configurations for maximized climate responsivenessClimate responsiveness, a novel dynamic skin prototype with rotatable triangular blades is further presented. Overall, the study aims to bridge the gap between the research and design of climate-responsive building skinsBuilding skin, thereby providing a reference for their application in similar climates.