Using a Building's Façade to Increase Efficiency and Recovery Time

Massachusetts General Hospital's Lunder Building, a new 14-story, 150-bed, 535,000-square-foot facility completed in 2011, was designed with the notion of increasing the operational efficiency as well as enhancing the healing aspect of its patients. Inserting a glass and steel-framed polygonal volume onto the 42,000-square-foot site, architects of NBBJ envisioned fragmenting the the mass and angled exterior planes within the glass façade detailing to express the building's multi-level functionality on the exterior. 

While glass is the optimal material selection in displaying the building's separate functions, it allows for the first two floors, designated for the initial reception, admissions, and circulation, to connect to the outdoors, transpiring  daylight to the interiors. The structure uses energy-efficienct insulated glass with low-E coating throughout, choosing glazing with a high visible-light transmittance and a high shading coefficient for the patient floors. 

Another important element that radiated through the project was the connection factor within the facility as well as with the surrounding context. The building is programmatically-dense, helping it to connect to five existing buildings via walkways and bridges. It appreciates the horizontality of the MGH's Yawkey Center for Outpatient Care and the verticality of the Ellison glass tower Building to seamlessly connect Lunder physically and aesthetically to the other hospital structures around it. Comprising of two interlocking, C-shaped groups of single-patient rooms, traversed by a central circulation spine, the design of the patient floor helps to minimize staff travel times, and brings natural light into the patient rooms and staff support areas. This section also incorporates two gardens, a five-story indoor atrium, and an outdoor bamboo garden on the sixth floor.

The approach to the design came from the rising trend of having medical facilities simulate residential styles to help patients assume a more relaxed atmosphere, away from the traditional feeling usually associated with being in a hospital. Incorporating soft lighting, bamboo accent walls, large garden-themed graphics, and both open and intimate spaces, help to link the benefits of having views to nature to the quality of the healing process. 

I believe applying the psychological correlations with design and recovery, while also incorporating sustainable qualities, is an approach that could increase the healing process and potentially grant patients with a longevity that wasn't in the prognoses before. 

Bio-Adaptive Façade

When it comes to innovation, the limit does not seem to exist when it comes to improving the way buildings operate and function. Now, more than ever, is the concern for green construction and building more evidently common practice, with many design firms, engineers, and contractors putting their efforts into sustainability. With this affinity, Arup, an international consulting firm that paved the way for marveled engineering projects like the Sydney Opera House and Beijing's Bird Nest for the 2008 Summer Olympics, led the design research for the world's first bio-adaptive façade, which will be installed in the BIQ house for the International Building Exhibition in Hamburg, Germany. The exhibition will be set to open on March 22, 2013.

"As well as generating renewable energy and providing shading to keep the inside of the building cooler on sunny days, this system also creates an interesting appearance that many architects and building owners will like. It is a valuable method for generating renewable energy, whilst providing effective solar shading which itself keeps cooling loads down." — Jan Wurm, Europe Research Leader,Arup

The concept proposes a zero-energy house that hopes to provide the first real-life test for the façade system that uses live micro-algae to produce energy while protecting the building from direct sunlight. The layered process is designed to contain the algae in what are termed bio-reactor panels, so that the algae grows faster in the bright sunlight so as to provide more internal shading. These bio-reactor panels also have other functions to help support the façade as well as in the operation of the building. By having the latest technology to not only produce biomass that can be harvested, the panels also capture solar thermal heat, thereby providing two energy sources that can be used to generate power for the building. 

Arup explains that one of the major components in developing this was the natural process of photosynthesis due to the amount of solar shading required, while conjunctionally the micro-algae growing in the glass louvres provide a clean source of renewable energy.

“To use bio-chemical processes for adaptive shading is a really innovative and sustainable solution so it is great to see it being tested in a real-life scenario. As well as generating renewable energy and providing shade to keep the inside of the building cooler on sunny days, it also creates a visually interesting look that architects and building owners will like.”  — Jan Wurm

Interactive Façades: Adapting to Environmental Conditions

 

Image Source :http://behnisch.com/projects/344

Rethinking the way façades interact with different environmental conditions comes from much study and evaluation in building enhancement solutions, prompting optimization, lower carbon footprint, and significant savings in operational costs, all without having to compromise the building's aesthetics. This idea of 'living buildings' were made by innovators seeking to bring the possibility of forward thinking and methodology involving how the building thinks, moves, reacts, and adapts to real time conditions.

The Unilever Headquarters located in Hafen City, Germany, conceived from Behnisch Architects combined double skin façade technology, operable windows, and Warema controllable exterior venetian blinds to accentuate the holistic efforts made. The double skin allows for the inner layer to be composed of high-performance glass operable windows with exterior aluminum blinds to reduce heat gain which are controlled by a solar tracking device located on the building's rooftop, unless occupants wish for a different setting, to which it is then controlled manually. The team also took into account the strong winds that are found in the area and designed the blinds to have wind shields. 

 

Image Source: http://behnisch.com/projects/344

 

Image Source: http://behnisch.com/projects/344

An innovative approach to cooling this double skin was to wrap the façades in a clear protective membrane made of ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE), which is supported by the steel and aluminum frame, to allow for the 3 to 6 foot spacing from the inner façade to ventilate fresh air from the top and bottom into the cavity and through the operable windows. The building was designed to use less than 100 kilowatt-hours of primary energy per square meter each year.

One futuristic model, even if too dynamic for some, however still innovative, for assessing outdoor conditions while optimizing the internal climate to the personal preference of individual spaces is the approach accomplished by Ernst Giselbrecht + Partner through the Kiefer Technic Showroom, consisting of aluminum posts and transoms.

Video Source: YouTube

Building envelopes are and have been an essential component in a building's design, whether for aesthetic purposes or for more practical uses such as passive ventilation. As such, it is with this essential component that the green movement inspire designers and engineers alike to formulate and revolutionize building façades. Advances towards installing dynamic building envelopes will help to reevaluate the relationship occupants have with the building and the environment around them. 

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Evaluating the Concerns of an All-Glass Building

The built environment has seen an acute increase of interest over the last decade targeted towards a building’s overall performance. Green building defines itself to be a design and construction strategy for improving efficiencies such as energy and lighting, water, and materials while also increasing employee productivity, employee health, and construction and debris recycling, all stemming from how it affects the economic and environmental factors. “Green” has, within the last decade, become synonymous with terminology and trends beyond its definition as just a color. It is widely referred as being cautiously aware of the human impacts on the environment, including, but not limited to, how we create new forms of energy, purpose product materials, and asses the waste amounted from all aspects of life. Buildings have great impact on our lives, improving our communities, health and well-being, as well as sustain and facilitate business and it is with this that society has paid close attention  to the relationship green and the built environment have.

Culturally, over the past half century, our feelings towards an all-glass building tends to generally be of an awe-gawking one, impressed not only by the aesthetics, but by the ingenuity that comes with it. It was made technologically possible to construct a free standing structural frame that no longer required an exterior wall to serve as a major bearing support. Prime examples of highly glazed facades can be found in some of New York City's skyscrapers, such as One Bryant Park and the New York Times Tower. 

 

Main entrance to One Bryant Park (Retrieved from http://www.e-architect.co.uk/images/jpgs/new_york/one_bryant_park_cookplusfox240908_cdbox_4.jpg)

Among it being an often popular choice because of its aesthetics and optimum daylighting capabilities, there are many other components that make it a wondrous design feature. It allows for occupants to connect to the outdoors, allowing for the natural elements to become exposed and enveloped with the building. Glass is also a very durable product that has the ability to withstand the aging process far better than many other building skins do within the urban environment.

Such a long time fascination with transparent designs has certainly raised concerns, particularly with those that surround the issues of sustainable design and construction that are responding to increasing energy usage and consumption. Many partisans of high-performance green design argue that the idea of an all-glass facade might indeed be something of extraordinary construction with pleasing aesthetics, but with a price they are not willing to compromise for. Accordingly, it is in the best interest to wait for improved glass technologies that will make for better solutions when implementing an all transparent designed structure. 

Still, the major issue at hand is energy. Generally speaking, these type of constructs tend to be ones that consume more energy in comparison to buildings with moderate levels of glass incorporated into them, as well, as an increase in solar heat gain and conversely, heat loss in colder weather. An energy-modeling exercise was conducted for Environmental Building News, that detailed five variables in response to the overall energy consumption of a 10-story, 10,000 sq. ft. per floor building. What resulted were the different impacts in reference to partnering appropriate glazing type windows and glazing percentage to proper building orientation and footprint according to its location. Other solutions that fostered from such exercise prompted the idea to use different types of glazing in accordance with the side of orientation. Many designers forfeit this method for the simple reason of not wanting to compromise aesthetics and possibly their time and efforts in researching the projected heating and cooling loads that might associate with this type of design component. Interior and exterior shading are an optimal and more cost-effective approach to solving solar heat gain and heat loss, with possible automated shades that are activated by sensors to provide maximum comfort. 

 New York Times Tower has both fixed exterior shading and automated, motorized interior blinds triggered by daylight sensors to provide a maximum level of control.

On the other side, architects, green designers, and energy experts alike, respond that although the concern for   energy consumption is increasing globally at an alarming rate and is an issue that designers, contractors, and engineers should take seriously, many can argue that there have been measures taken to account for such an issue. According to Paul LeBarge, the green building strategy manager for Apogee Enterprises in Minneapolis, "if we incorporate features to distribute daylight deeply into a building and to block it when it is not wanted, highly-glazed facades offer a tremendous amenity in large buildings," thereby increasing energy efficiency and work productivity.

Building with such an elaborate, aesthetic material like glass can present its challenges and concerns when discussing the energy consumption that might arise, but I believe it is a design element that, in the present day, cannot be avoided or dismissed on terms like these. There are solutions and methods that prove to work in favor of an all glass facade with studies and exercises detailing the proper measures needed to be taken when considering such a design feature, like the building orientation and glazing percentage. I also concur on the fact that with the world turning to greener solutions in the design and construction fields, innovation and technologies are quick to follow with material companies engineering their products to become what designers and contractors alike will use because of such a response to sustainability.  

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