Smart biofaçades; An innovative living construction technology

Abstract

Creating comfortable urban built environments is a challenging endeavour in Qatar, due to the rapid development and the prevailing extremely hot climatic conditions. High-rise buildings glazed envelopes and concrete masses result in large amount of solar heat gains, leading to the phenomena of carbon dioxide emissions and the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect (Fadli et al., 2016). For this purpose, the present study aims at conducting an extensive experimental study to develop a smart innovative bio-green wall system that adapts to the climate of Qatar and the Gulf region. The system will consist of compact lightweight panels -with focus on high-rise buildings- that can be pre-fabricated and customized for mass production. The explorative study aims to design and experiment this innovative living construction material and technology with multiple base materials and planting media. It is meant to be finalized on various functional layers that have to be embedded into a single panel. This innovative passive design device will simplify the idea of green walls and will encourage the application of a new construction material (smart green facades) on high-rise buildings (Fadli, 2017). It will further be incorporated with smart sensing system for watering and maintenance. Enhancing high-rise buildings with smart green facades, besides their striking visual effect, will for sure increase the building energy efficiency. It will also create a wellbeing effect on the psychological and physiological health of individuals and creates natural habitat areas in cities. Furthermore, the experimental results will allow the formulation of a new smart living construction material that would enable the path towards making liveable healthy smart buildings and cities.