The local ventilation system coupled with the indirect green façade: a priliminary study

Abstract

Green facades are becoming an important architectural element in an urban environment. Regarding the technology of the installation of green facades, one can distinguish between direct and indirect green facades, living walls and double skin facades with foliage. In addition to aesthetics of green facades, an impact on the outdoor and the indoor comfort has been proven. That is due to changed temperature and air fl ow conditions at the building envelope boundary. It has been proven that green facades impact lower surface temperatures of a building envelope and enhance thermal insulation properties of a building envelope, thus reducing the energy demand of a building. Based on the results from green facade thermal response research and growing interest in local ventilation systems, one can conclude that there is potential for a free cooling of a building. Therefore, this paper presents the design and the preliminary experimental research of a local ventilation system coupled with an indirect green facade. Based on the experimental work, it has been ascertained that the indirect green facade can impact a 5 K lower inlet air temperature for the local ventilation system compared with the one at the traditional facade.