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