BUILDING ENVELOPE IN THE TROPICS : FROM PASSIVE & ACTIVE, TOWARDS INTELLIGENCE, THE CLIMATIC RESPONSIVE SKIN FOR SUSTAINABLE ARCHITECTURE

Abstract

The building envelope is the skin of the building where the interior spaces meet the exterior spaces, while at the same time acts as a filter, mitigating the bad and the good of the weather. This membrane protects the building from the elements of the environment like sunlight, heat, rain and wind.

The environmental design is over-burdened by the pressures initiated by climatic changes that increased awareness of the environmental crisis and depleting energy sources. These issues encouraged the general public to call for sustainability in design in recent years. Human skin is being discussed as the metaphor of building skin. Subsequently, the treatment of the building skin began to ‘evolve’ and shading strategies are discussed on.

Nowadays architects tend to look for design solutions that creates sustainable architecture with maximum energy saving and minimum environmental impacts. However, passive design tends to focus more on building efficiency rather than fulfilling human comfort and active design neglect building performance while fulfilling human comfort. Therefore, a hybrid system with ‘Passive + Active’ can be used as the bridging element to merge passive and active design while reducing energy consumption and fulfilling human comfort.

Furthermore, both passive and active design strategies are well adapted in the Singapore context. However, the use of intelligent building envelope system is still not common in the local architectural practice. An “intelligent” building façade should respond intelligently with its’ ‘brain’ and reliably to the changing outdoor conditions and internal performance needs. It should exploit available natural energies for lighting, cooling and ventilation. It should be able to provide large energy savings compared to conventional technologies, and at the same time maintain optimal lighting and thermal comfort conditions. The “Intelligent” skin will seek for a better performance with the balance between energy efficiency and human comfort.

To substantiate the discussion, case studies of innovative building envelope in Singapore will be raised. Through critical analysis of all the case studies, it helps to demonstrate the advantages and limitations of the different building envelope systems. With this, we can see that the future trend of building envelope in Singapore is moving towards the direction of sustainable, intelligent and technologically advanced to achieve a green future. – “Towards Intelligence”