Bio-inspired interactive kinetic façade: Using dynamic transitory-sensitive area to improve multiple occupants’ visual comfort

Abstract

The architectural form of the façade determines its identity as well as interactions with micro-climate forces of the ambient environment, such as solar radiation. The dynamic nature of daylight and occupants' positions can cause some issues such as heat gains and visual discomfort, which need to be controlled in real-time operation. Improving daylight performance and preventing visual discomfort for multiple occupants simultaneously is challenging. However, integrating the biomimicry principles of morphological adaptation with dynamic, complex fenestration, and human-in-loop systems can lead us to find an optimal solution. This research builds on relevant literature study, biomimicry morphological approaches, and parametric simulations, to develop a bio-inspired interactive kinetic façade for improving multiple occupants' visual comfort simultaneously, inspired by plant's stomata movement and behavior principles. Learning from the transitory stage and hunting new position of stomata's patchy patterns, leads us to identify the dynamic transitory-sensitive area of attraction point on the façade that is triggered by the dynamic sun-timing position and multiple occupants. The annual climate-based metrics and luminance-based metric simulation results of 810 bio-inspired interactive kinetic façade alternatives prove that the elastic-deformable-complex-kinetic form triggered by the dynamic transitory-sensitive area can improve the visual comfort of multiple occupants simultaneously. In particular, the bio-inspired interactive kinetic façade with grid division 8x1 displays extraordinary daylight performance for south direction that prevents visual discomfort by keeping cases in the imperceptible range while providing an adequate average Spatial Daylight Autonomy of 60.5%, Useful Daylight illuminance of 90.47%, and Exceed Useful Daylight illuminance of 2.94%.

Keywords

• Interactive kinetic façade
• Transitory-sensitive area
• Biomimicry morphological adaptation
• Dynamic daylight and multiple occupants
• Visual comfort