Neighbourhood Shading Impacts on Passive Adaptive Façade Collective Behaviour

The past decade witnessed a shift in adaptive facades from energy-intensive complex systems to material-based actuated facades. The latter, however, were only developed with limited control in shape memory alloy applications, and more generally designed as independent components. The perception of the component within a system as a self-regulating entity was shown to widen the behavioural response and intelligence of an adaptive system in several projects. On the other hand, its range of impact and integration as a design factor were not targeted at full breadth in the literature. The study’s objective was to investigate the incorporation of neighbourhood shading behaviour of a shape memory alloy-actuated facade component on the entire system. Based on a designed adaptive component, the research identifies the shading impact on the actuators’ incident solar radiation as well as its hourly and seasonal range, and thus encourages a better prediction of collective behaviour.