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Bio-inspired Adaptive Building Skins

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Biotechnologies and Biomimetics for Civil Engineering

Abstract

How do living organisms capture, convert, store and process energy, water and sunlight? How does nature cool down, heat up, provide shade, and control light? Adaptability, the ability of a system to act in response to variations in environmental conditions often plays a key role in this context. Unlike living organisms, buildings are typically conceived as static, inanimate objects. Because a building’s surroundings and internal conditions are constantly changing, there is a lot to learn about how inspiration from nature can foster more adaptability of the façade for enhanced building performance. After highlighting the need for more adaptability in the built environment, this chapter reviews state-of-the-art examples of research concepts and design applications with bio-inspired adaptable solutions for the building envelope. All examples are in the scope of building physics and energy efficiency with a focus on improving indoor environmental quality. The chapter concludes with an outlook of design support methodologies that can potentially incite the practical uptake of bio-inspired adaptive building skins in the future.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Unit Building Physics and Services, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    R. C. G. M. Loonen

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  1. R. C. G. M. Loonen
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Correspondence to R. C. G. M. Loonen .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. C-TAC Research Unit, University of Minho, Guimarães, Portugal

    Fernando Pacheco Torgal

  2. CICECO University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal

    J. A. Labrincha

  3. Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

    M. V. Diamanti

  4. Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Urban Environment, Xiamen, China

    C.-P. Yu

  5. Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, Korea, Republic of (South Korea)

    H. K. Lee

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Loonen, R.C.G.M. (2015). Bio-inspired Adaptive Building Skins. In: Pacheco Torgal, F., Labrincha, J., Diamanti, M., Yu, CP., Lee, H. (eds) Biotechnologies and Biomimetics for Civil Engineering. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09287-4_5

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