rethinking facades
facades and heat
I remember hot summer days when I would go for a walk in Berlin, and all surfaces, facades and pavements seemed to intensify the heat and make it more unbearable. And I thought, these stone deserts have something unescapable about them.
At some point, I started to wonder whether anything could be done about bare cities.
Taking a look at nature
Left to its own devices, nature avoids large, unbroken surfaces. In fact, if you look at trees, you will find two relevant aspects: A tree trunk and the ground are protected from constant direct sunlight by hundreds or thousands of leaves. And those leaves are mobile.
Compare that to a common house facade and you have the opposite: large unbroken surfaces which soak up heat.
Finding a way to protect a house from heat also means to reduce the heat a house emits. After all, a facade that has been warmed by the sun isn’t neutral. It becomes a source of heat itself.
How to break a facade’s surface and add mobile elements?
The easiest way is to imitate nature’s effective way of avoiding large surfaces by working with climbing plants like vine, and to add gardens on the roofs (including the necessary supportive structures).
This doesn’t necessarily look good all year round, but it is an effective protection.
Another possibility is to build facades that consist of many small elements which are added at different depths.
These elements could be mobile, meaning these elements could be turned (for example whenever they reach a certain temperature).
Also possible is an imitation of leaves, either close to a facade or at a distance so that the leaves (made of wood or bamboo, for example) can move freely in the wind.
Puncturing a facade should also help to reduce the effect of sunshine on the surface.
Windows, and glass surfaces in general, trap and release heat, too. A lot of cooling can be achieved when we use all means possible to protect surfaces from direct sunlight.
And here is another intriguing idea. What if, a facade was made of two or three layers of artificial leaves (allowing for air circulation), and the outer leaves included solar cells? At the same time all leaves could turn in a kind of socket thereby using the airflows to generate wind energy? Once someone finds out how to build such a facade, then a multitude of benefits could be gained:
- generating solar energy
- generating wind energy
- in other words, having facades which generate energy instead of heating the city, town, village.
- independence of energy market prices
- protecting the facade from generating and storing heat
- creating a facade that doesn’t look bare (An aspect which should probably get its own chapter: What are the effects on our health when we look at a bare facade as compared to seeing a facade full of leaves and live?)
- offering shade for animals
- reducing the amount of unbroken surfaces in a city, town, village
- cooling cities, towns, villages, our planet
Questions to explore
What’s the trouble with house facades?
What’s the trouble with windows and more general with glass surfaces.
Can windows be used as a solar panel?
Trees. Can their structure be translated into designs for facades? What can we learn from forests? What from meadows?
Can facades be broken in a way that a great variety of plants can grow there?
How to rewild roof tops? How to plant on roofs of all shapes? Can we learn from mountains for our roofs. Can we learn from mountains for the composition of our towns.
What kind of gardens are best for roofs?
How do trees interact with wind? How do buildings interact with wind?
How do big surfaces heat up compared to fractured surfaces?
Is there a difference between fracturing horizontally or vertically, or is a mixture best?
If buildings stored less heat and thereby gave off less heat, wouldn’t that reduce heat in general?
Also take into account pavements. How much pavement do we need? How much can we give back to nature and thereby reduce the kind of unbroken, bare surfaces which make heat so unbearable and add to the heating of our planet.
Explore where the need for neat gardens, surfaces, straight roads, pavements, massive stone squares came from. How can we return to nature and cool our habitats?
Which materials would be best for facades?
Materials which store no or little heat. Materials who protect the house from cold. Materials which have no negative impact on the environment, neither in the production process nor while in use nor when it’s time to replace them.
What else can be rethought about facades?
‘I’ve been talking to Jason and his architects today,’ Maja said. ‘And we’re thinking about collaborating with artists for the facades of some buildings.’
‘Graffiti?’ Jack asked.
‘Maybe. But we focused on other artistic elements. Alice always talks about including surprises, and what better surprise than a hairy leg that’s halfway through a wall, or a clock with only half a face? Facade elements you wouldn’t expect. Jason wants to go over movies with you and look for inspirations.’
Jack chuckled. ‘I could make a list on the spot. I’ll find him first thing tomorrow.’
‘Good. And we talked about integrating mosaics and reliefs, the tamer kind of facade decorations.’
‘Some of us even added practical elements,’ Roger rumbled in his deep voice, looking up from his carving, ‘like plant boxes with a watering system, homes for birds and insects, a pulley so you don’t have to carry your shopping upstairs, an emergency toolbox with tools and bulbs, and a sundial for the poor buggers who only have half a clock on their facade.’
Landscapes as inspiration for town planning
A good result can probably be achieved by fashioning towns and cities like landscapes, and shaping them in all directions: different heights (of buildings and surfaces and as part of a building’s design), unevenly fractured surfaces (winding roads, random houses, random trees, random garden areas). Or in other words randomness on the ground levels, randomness in the composition of houses, trees and other elements within a town’s layout, randomness in the heights of all elements, randomness used on the facades of houses.
Isn’t it remarkable that nature has little visual structure and sameness, while humans seem to be obsessed with repeating pattern?
Nature isn’t repetitive as such. It always creates variations. It always creates uniqueness. That’s why it’s doubly strange that we use so many simplifying and generalising brands, instead of acknowledging diversity and abundance.
Heatwave special
During a heatwave in 2022, I noticed how much my glass windows heated up and thereby heated my flat, even though I had covered the windows.
This made me consider testing what would happen if I covered the windows from the outside.
The notes of my experiments are compiled in the Heatwave special >
More building ideas
You can find more thoughts and ideas on buildings and building in the dot.international book, chapter dot. as a blueprint, coex building.
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