Physiomimetic Façade Design

Adaptive façades are designed to actively regulate the exchange of material and energy flows and thus improve the balance between comfort and energy consumption. However, their technical complexity leads to higher development efforts, maintenance and costs, and ultimately fewer implementations.

Embedded adaptive functions could be an opportunity to reduce these drawbacks. If embedded adaptivity is to work within a design, the particularities of geometry and material arrangements must be considered. Nature offers fascinating models for this approach, which frames the objectives of this doctoral dissertation. The dissertation examines both adaptive façades and biology criteria that support a function-oriented transfer of thermo-adaptive principles in the early design stage. The research work discusses whether the technical complexity can be reduced by biomimetic designs and which role geometric design strategies play for thermo-adaptive processes.

The research work is divided into three phases, following the top-down process in the discipline biomimetics, supplemented by methods from product design and semantic databases. The first phase is dedicated to the analysis of the contextual framework and criteria of façades aiming at thermal adaptation.

Further, transfer systematics are developed that guide the analysis and selection process. In the second phase, analogies in biology are collected that appear suitable. Selected examples are examined to identify and systematically describe their functional principle. Two exemplary descriptions herald the third phase, in which functional façade models are created and evaluated.

The result of this research work provides a conceptual approach to generate function-imitating biomimetic façade designs, so-called physio-mimetic façade designs.