Metereosensitive user-controllable skin for dynamic facades

Smart adaptive, or dynamic skin façades have been considered a promising and efficient strategy to enhance the internal lighting and thermal comfort in modern buildings, especially with the target of nearly zero-energy impact. However, they can be hardly combined with user controllability that is instead an essential characteristic to allow an actual implementation. The design of an innovative solar shading system, configured as a dynamic modular façade employing shape-memory morphing structures, is therefore proposed here. Each module is composed by two matched systems: the outer structure, made of a shape-memory polymer (SMP), will react to different levels of solar irradiation, opening and closing accordingly in an autonomous way; the inner structure, driven instead by a shape-memory alloy (SMA) actuator, may be electrically controlled by the user in order to modify the effects produced by external layer, without any interference with it when not actuated. The SMP layer allows a completely autonomous passive control of the internal conditions and zero-energy actuation, and it looks like a suitable solution from an environmental point of view. The integration of the SMA-actuated module grants the possible implementation of the resulting structure in real buildings, conciliating comfort, well-being and performances (adaptive comfort) towards a personalized control of living and working environments.