2011 International Conference on Intelligent Building and Management
Proc .of CSIT vol.5 (2011) © (2011) IACSIT Press, Singapore
Contemporary Ways of Space Envelopment- Intelligent Building?
Daniel Comsa +
Ph.D. Architect, Lecturer in the Synthesis in Architectural Design Department,
Faculty of Architecture, “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism Bucharest
Abstract. Contemporary Architecture experiences new ways of space envelopment that satisfy the
influences of past utopias from more than one point of view: aesthetic, energy-wise and structure wise. All
these experiments present in the interior-exterior interface should answer one simple question:
Can we consider Contemporary ways of space envelopment intelligent skins?
In this study, intelligent building features are focused on the façade. The intelligent skin sometimes becomes
part of the building and adjusts the fastest to the changes that happen. Physical pressure on the façade created
by the development of adaptive Architecture leads to its transformation. The most visible changes in the
façade are present in the interior-exterior interface characteristics.
The façade should be the most adaptive part of the building that has to change according to the needs of an
Intelligent Building. The external limit for the interior space should protect and breathe within a continuous
communication process with the exterior.
The main case study for architects could be efficient spatial configuration in order to reach the final purpose
of creating the intelligent building.
Historical references will gradually conduct the research towards creating a methodology that follows
evolution from micro to macro structure and then from inert to adaptable features of buildings.
Keywords: Adaptive Architecture, Envelope, Dynamic Façade, Experimental Architecture, Interface
1. Introduction
The contemporary ways of space envelopment create new influences that are visible to the interiorexterior interface and become important for both theory and practice of Architecture.
The main case study for architects should be efficient spatial configuration in order to reach the final
purpose of creating the intelligent building.
Architects are not so keen anymore about the management of the building. But the end-use of the
building is also part of intelligent management and design of living spaces, therefore part of an architect’s
job.
2. Historical references
Vitruvius stated the first example of how to build intelligent Architecture by properly positioning the
building in the town or in the relief. The protective role of the wall started from the city wall as it was in
town where he lived. The cela model of Architecture with a porch in front, for shade, describes the system of
conditioning temperature for the interior during summer.
+
Corresponding author. Tel.: + 40 721505910; fax: +40 21 3123954
E-mail address: dancomsa@yahoo.com
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„On this principle of arrangement the disagreeable force of the winds will be shut out from dwellings
and lines of houses. For if the streets run full in the face of the winds, their constant blasts rushing in from
the open country, and then confined by narrow alleys, will sweep through them with great violence. The lines
of houses must therefore be directed away from the quarters from which the winds blow, so that as they come
in they may strike against the angles of the blocks and their force thus be broken and dispersed”.[1]
Visible from the envelope level, the system created by Architecture is well reflected in space by cardinal
points positioning, on the dominant wind or even according to the star-signs[2] that Vitruvius mentions.
During time, the façade evolves from massivity to total transparency: 1851 Crystal Palace- Joseph
Paxton. After having built this, transparency was meant to evoke and then evolve to the conceptual
dematerialisation.
Using the vernacular houses model, architects understand that walls are mediators between human body
needs and exterior environment.
In the end of the 19th Century and the begining of the 20th Century the entire system of enviromental
technologies called HVAC (heat, ventilation and air conditioning)[3] frees the walls from their role as
enviromental mediators. But the intelligent building has to use in a better way all these advantages. For
example, a glass façade should come with an air conditioning system and blinds for saving energy during
ventilation.
Intelligent buildings seen from outside were at first an illusion or a manifest. Starting with Georges
Pompidou Center from Paris, Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers showed all the installation to the outside of
the building as if it were the extension of a brain.
Later on in Paris, at the Arab World Institute, Jean Nouvel shows to the sunny South an adaptive façade
full of mechanical diafragms linked with the construction brain which coordinates devices that open and
close creating shade for the interior.
Fig. 1: Georges Pompidou Center from Paris architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers (Photo D.C.)
Fig. 2, 3, 4: Arab World Institute architect Jean Nouvel (Photo D.C.)
Intelligent buildings are much more than just that or strictly a form from the architect’s point of view.
They have created a technology that adjusts the interior to the shape of living.
Spatial wise, the façade is the one that envelopes the interior space, but the intelligent building shows all
its technology through it. Adaptive features make a façade more dynamic and also create the illusion that the
façade has a possible movement which was speculated by architects in time.
At the Venice Bienalle architects experimented with concepts of a building that uses internal temperature
or humidity totally different than usual. In 2008 Philippe Rahm Architects come with the idea that architects
should no longer build spaces but start creating atmospheres and climates. The visual effect was not very
present, but the temperature control was associated with other sensory stimuli like: cinnamon, garlic, mint,
camphor and chilli for every range of temperature.
In 2010 using the same temperature control, Transsolar and Tetsuo Kondo Architects, create an
ambiance named Cloudscapes. This is a project where visitors are invited to feel the effect of the density and
temperature of the water vapors condensed into a cloud. This time, the cloud is visible and accessible
through a spiral ramp. So the possibility of passing through makes this experiment more direct and easier to
understand for everybody.
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In the context of climate change people should realize that living in a space can more than just that,
especially if a building is supposed to adapt intelligently and solve more and more adjustment issues in the
very near future.
3. Intelligent Skin, Intelligent building
Green Architecture, building energy saving and enviromental protection are actually the new challenges
in Architecture. Architects are constantly aware of the materials they can use in creating façades. The use of
new technology and experimentation in building envelopment are also of high interest to professionals in
constructions. While architects have to confine to space and its envelopment, technology experimentation
(provided by other sciences) and material experimentation are made through traditional or innovative
techniques. The relevant issues of this project are still in the experiment phase worldwide. Some of them are
still unsolved, others are in a proposal stage or even utopian, but most of them have materialized in iconic
buildings.
Sometimes living buildings and green buildings are specific cases of intelligent buildings. They behave
like Bodies Without Organs [4] in the Deleuzian [5] sense of the heterotopian [6] relationship with the body
as a built entity loses the sense of being mearly an envelope of the building and becomes an entire parasitary
universe attached to the building.
Neoplasmatic Design is the theme of the 2008’s last issue of Architectural Design Magazine, that
approaches the subject of building envelopes from the material perspective and use. The manipulation and
the control of micro-organic matters in Architecture[7] are research directions on how biology, microbiology,
biotechnology, surgery or cloning connect with the Architecture field.
Inversabrane[8] is a research material of DuPont Corian company from the solid surfaces’ category, used
in public spaces and desirable in the role of a Green wall – better said Alive wall. The features of this
material such as: air and water purification, bulletproof character make it very attractive. It is also seen as an
evolution of life. People can groom it where needed. Ever since 2005 this material started to be put at use in
Architecture projects and competitions. Architects appreciate it and have created a new Aesthetics around it.
Computer generated solutions in Architecture have lead to the development of the Body Algorithm [9]
starting from the 80’s utopias until today’s free expresiveness. The parametric character of design software
offers architects endless choices of space envelopment so that they focus on how to create an intelligent
building.
Materials used in the building façades are diversified and science is set to bring something new that
revolutionizes this field. Biology is the science that Ecology and Green Buildings expect most of. Adapting
plants to form a structure on their own could be one challenge, their behavior related to sun for building parts
could be another one, and growing interchangable parts of the building could be the final goal.
Biology and Botanics along with these materials are more of an interface or a membrane capable of
protecting the inside in a suitable environment for inhabitation. The intelligent building should turn after the
sun, conserve energy during the day and use it at night, when needed. Technically speaking, nothing is
impossible, but the costs of achieving it are ever too often high for a self-sustainable unit like this.
Wyss Institute conducts research on materials’ adaptability to different conditions like: moist and poreclosure, resistance, adaptive speed, etc. Another feature of materials that is very useful to constructions is
their memory: reversible elastic deformations and their restore to the initial shape after being deformed.
Living materials are features to be used in Adaptive Architecture. Microscopic environments reveal
invisible configurations in wide spaces/ large surfaces of architectural dimensions. [10]
Just as playing „GO” cells get together by forming tridimensional junctions and protecting the
nucleus/core when they are mature. Life offers protection solutions as well as attack weapons, therefore
inspiration for cellular Architecture is provided even by a virus or bacteria that is dynamic enough to occupy
space and create a membrane.
Adaptive Building Initiatives produce adaptive façades and building envelopes, designing adaptive
mechanical systems. [11]
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Perhaps our ideas on space are wrong. Maybe space in constructions should not be simply erect and wait
there for us, but adjustable so that it contains us at the moment of transition. The Stratus Project develops a
kinetic interior envelope. [12]
All this research will influence the future of the building envelope and the idea (concept) of intelligent
building will change along.
The Solar Decathlon is a competition that has the goal of self sustainaing a 70 sqm house. All these
examples are not necessarily intelligent buildings with an integrated system of management but by their own
adaptive features are self efficient. Finding new adaptive features for the building skin will be the challenge
for new experimentation in Architecture.
In the Treescraper Tower of Tomorrow leading architect William McDonough shows his commitment to
creativity, intelligent building and designs that feed ecosystems, and also expresses how a System integrated
Building could be visible through project. [13]
These things are more than useful and necessary to a building. But the adaptability of the envelope is
much more important in the context of shape-function-significance the main trinomial of Architecture – and
any suplementary constraints that are meant to help inhabitation but not improve the Aesthetics of the
projects and interior spaces.
Architectural features have to deal with differences between the useful skin and the ornamental package,
even if Adolf Loss wanted to finish this 100 years ago. Contemporary Aestetics like the Prada store in Tokyo
designed by J. Herzog and P. De Meuron looks like it deals with both aspects.
Building Skin or Inteligent Skin are problems that concern inteligent buildings and the adaptive features
of the skin if are put correctly in the building envelope the result will be amazing for the confort parameters.
Inteligent Skin [14] is analysed by a set of factors called intelligent controls:
Daylight adjustement- reflection/protection, Glare control- blinds/louvres/fixed, Responsive artificial
light control, Heating control, Heat recovery- warm/cooling, Cooling control, ventilation control, fabric
control- windows/dampers/doors, Insulation- night/solar.
”The building façade should no longer be regarded as a static and inert barrier, but a Dynamic
enviromental filter with the energy passing through it ripe for exploatation.” [15]
4. Adaptive architecture
Inhabiting adaptive Architecture means living in a dream house or a fiction like Boris Vian’s [16] where
the walls fall and understand you so they act in consequence.
One of the latest conferences that focused mainly on Adaptive Architecture was organized in London,
Great Britain, in March 3rd to 5th 2011. Adaptive concerns were divided in 4 main subjects: Dynamic
Façades, Transformable Structures, Bio-Inspired Materials, Intelligence. Sensory responsive architecture will
be examined including dynamic, responsive façades and communicative building fabric systems that are
capable of reducing energy demands whilst creating comfort and the integration of energy generation into
contemporary architecture.
Hyposurface created by Mark Goulthorpe is the model for Dynamic Facades that is why he was invited
as a Keynote speaker. His speech called Die Plastik refers the intelligent skin as an adaptabile one using all
the features for an inteligent building.
Inhabitation of Adaptive Architecture also means a progress in the performance of the space envelope.
Living in such a place is now more and more close to reality through new technologies and experiments in
Architecture.
These experiments that happen in the contemporary envelopment process have to be categorized on
several criteria. Materials categorized according to texture, geometry or colour gain dynamic characteristics
like: light, text, vibration are typical in scenography.
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The technology in use or the technique, as well as original ideas’ presentations in relation to shape,
function and significance will offer the study two points of interest: theoretical and mostly practical.
Shape-Function-Significance form a trinomial that defines Architecture and suggests the importance of
form in space composition. This is the reason that enveloping spaces is one of the archetipal concerns of
Architecture.
The central element in the study of Architecture is space. Therefore any scientific research have space as
main study object and the issues of space envelopment are just as up-to-date as the primordial shelter in
contemporary times as well as in the future of an architect.
The interior-exterior interface through the analysis of shape characteristics in Contemporary Architecture
is best defined formally according to the feedback shared with the trinomial formed by shape-functionsignificance.
“Intelligent skins” present different technological methods of expressing the interior-exterior interface. A
separate section of the study is dedicated to gathering ethnic and religious elements from the 20th Century as
well as an analysis of the interior-exterior interface manifest in Romanian architecture.
Contemporary architects are lately interested in enveloping spaces with perfect skins which solve aestetic
and energy-wise problems at the same time. Adaptive Architecture use dynamic façades, transformable
structures, bio-insipired materials in creating inteligent skins for building.
We should see if adaptability could be another feature that Architecture develops in the future.
The main goal of this scientific research is creating a system of experimental architecture trends present
in the envelope structure.
The conclusions go beyond the subject of dematerialization of the interior-exterior interface and gather
the premises of a contemporary way creating adaptive Architecture along with the designing process.
The interdisciplinary character of the study generates new approaches in future scientific research
regarding experiments in space envelopment.
5. Acknowledgements
The participation at the “2011 International Conference on Intelligent Building and Management
(ICIBM 2011)” and my entire research having the main focus on “Contemporary Ways of Enveloping
Spaces” was financed by the Romanian authorities through The National Council of Scientific Research for
Superior Education. CNCSIS Code: PD-73.
6. References
[1] Ten Books on Architecture, by Vitruvius The Project Gutenberg EBook
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/20239/pg20239.html
[2] Idem CHAPTER VII 1. In distinction from the subjects first mentioned, we must ourselves explain the principles
which govern the shortening and lengthening of the day. When the sun is at the equinoxes, that is, passing through
Aries or Libra, he makes the gnomon cast a shadow equal to eight ninths of its own length, in the latitude of Rome.
In Athens, the shadow is equal to three fourths of the length of the gnomon; at Rhodes to five sevenths; at
Tarentum, to nine elevenths; at Alexandria, to three fifths; and so at other places it is found that the shadows of
equinoctial gnomons are naturally different from one another.
[3] Michelle Addington – art. Contingent Behaviours, pp 12-17
Sean Lally, Energies New Material Boundaries, Architectural Design, Ed. Wiley, May/June 2009
[4] Francois Roche- art. Bodies Without Organs pp.68-69
Marcos Cruz and Steve Pike, Neoplasmatic Design, Architectural Design, Ed. Wiley, November/ December 2008
[5] Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari Capitalism and Schizophrenia:Anti-Oedipus 1983, University of Minnesota
Press
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[6] Michel Foucault. Of Other Spaces (1967), Heterotopias.
http://foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html
[7] Marcos Cruz and Steve Pike, Neoplasmatic Design, Architectural Design, Ed. Wiley, November/ December 2008
[8] http://www.kolmacllc.com/tmp/kolmacllc_web.pdf
http://www.evansandpaul.com/casestudies/Case%20History%200INVERSAbrane%20Green%20Curtain%20Wall
%20NY.pdf
[9] http://www.worldarchitecture.org/world-buildings/world-buildingsdetail.asp?ref=rb&rel=3&position=detail&country=Greece&no=2432
[10] http://wyss.harvard.edu/viewmedia/140/microfloret-with-tilt[11] http://www.adaptivebuildings.com/wyss-institute.html
[12] http://www.tcaup.umich.edu/resources/research_outreach_and_funding/research_through_making_grant/ or
http://archimorph.wordpress.com/2011/03/
[13] http://inhabitat.com/the-building-of-tomorrow-that-works-like-a-tree/.
[14] Wigginton Michael, Harris Jude, The Intelligent Skin, Architectural Press, London 2002
[15] Boris Vian (10 March 1920 – 23 June 1959) French writer, subtle wordplay and surrealistic plots L'Écume des
jours
7. Bibliography
Christian Schittich, In Detail Building Skins, Brickhauser- Publisher for architecture, 2006, Munich
G.Z. Brown and Mark Dekay, Sun, Wind & Light, Ed. Wiley, USA, 2000,
SOM Jurnal 5, Ed. Hatje Cantz, Germany, 2008
Wigginton Michael, Harris Jude, The Intelligent Skin, Architectural Press, London 2002
Marcos Cruz and Steve Pike, Neoplasmatic Design, Architectural Design, Ed. Wiley, November/ December 2008
Sean Lally, Energies New Material Boundaries, Architectural Design, Ed. Wiley, May/June 2009
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