Energy Sustainability of an Integrative Kinetic Light Shelf Unit

Purpose: Suggesting a working prototype of a kinetic light shelf unit and revealing its energy efficiency by a series of building performance simulations were presented. Recently, kinetic building envelope has been an emerging technology as an innovative way to control exterior building environment, but products from many researches about the facade could not been reached to the industrialization so far. That is because its initial installation, operation and maintenance costs are still too high to use for the practical field, although buildings using kinetic envelopes could decrease their energy consumption significantly. This narrow point of view needs to be reconsidered, since buildings require great amount of energies to run their functions through the whole life and using better building components can lead to achieve much more benefits in aspects of the lifecycle cost (LCC). Method: A series of certified simulation tools like Ecotect and Green Building Studio that are normally used for researches and developments in the field of architecture were utilized. Result: Based on simulation analyses, the result of the study has showed that the proposed system definitely has adaptability to the professions and positively shows practicability as advanced integrative building envelopes with renewable energy association.