Occupant-oriented adaptive building envelopes: A hybrid design framework for human, material, environment synergies

Abstract

While materially efficient, adaptive building envelopes often have difficulties in identifying and adapting to dynamic human sensations. This leads to perceived overheating or overcooling, with significant decrease in indoor environment quality. With a focus on thermal adaptive architectural surfaces, the paper investigates and outlines a hybrid design framework that aims to understand, map, and synthesize: Material-Environment synergies, through the adaptive behavior of environmentally responsive material composites. Human-Material synergies, through occupants’ behavioral actions for personal control and Environment-Human synergies, through dynamic individual thermal comfort assessment. The adaptation of this framework is further explored through a full-scale demonstrator, where methods and processes are evaluated for design applications in adaptive material systems, and their implications and further trajectories are discussed.