Dynamic analysis of climatic conditions for deriving suitable adaptive façade responses

Highly insulated buildings, combined with efficient HVAC systems, represent the mainstream approach to achieve low-energy buildings. However, if facades block energy exchange, the climatic resources surrounding the built environment remain untapped. Adaptive opaque facades seem promising to enhance whole building performance while reducing energy demand by their dynamic behaviour. The usual approach when defining their desired adaptive response is to test independent technologies by energy simulations, to calibrate their best adaptation range for a specific climate. Such technology-oriented approaches do rarely make a conscious analysis of the potential of local natural resources, which could lead to a weak adaptation strategy. Besides, the enhancement of combining responsive elements is usually omitted. This paper proposes a new approach for systematic analysis of dynamic climatic conditions, aiming to enable better decision-making at early design stages to ensure the proposed facade solution will have the maximum positive impact. To do so, we analysed the impact of combinations of climatic agents on the hygrothermal performance and we clustered them into Climatic Scenarios. Moreover, we examined the influence of studying not only these scenarios but also their transience. We carried out this systematic analysis for a specific temperate climate and we studied the sequences of three summer days using a screen tool that links the climate data with promising Adaptive Facade Responses. We observed how the meaningful candidate multi-responses changed in the sequence examination due to different past and future scenarios, which strengthen the need of a Dynamic Climate Analysis to properly define new adaptive facades.