Adaptive Facades: Retrofitting the Foundation Building

Instructors: Kihong Ku, Feiyu Qi, and Tong Lu

Student projects below were generated as part of the ARC301 Architectural Technology course in the BEng Architecture program at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU). Working in teams five students, 4th year undergraduate students explored various new processes, materials, methods, technologies, and functions that will help to understand the next generation of buildings and future building performance requirements. This provides the link between design and production, research and development, design ambitions and technological expertise. The projects presented below, illustrate how students engaged in the two areas of (1) designing dynamic building envelopes, and (2) exploring computational and material prototyping as design tools and methods. The project tasked stuents to retrofit the existing building envelope of the Foundation Building on the XJTLU Suzhou Campus, considering factors such as comfortable surface temperatures, indoor air quality, hygienic surfaces, adequate daylight, acoustic conditions, safe and user-friendly functionality, operation, energy efficiency, and other factors. Integrated passive design strategies, kinetic system strategies responding to constantly changing environmental conditions and individual human preferences, and the poetics of such systems were evaluated. Background lectures, series of skill-building exercises, and case studies supported students’ work.