TECHNOLOGY INTELLIGENT BUILDINGS
Smart Material Houses: BIQ, Bioreactor façade (IBA-Hamburg GmbH / Johannes Arl) Self-healing building skins, akin to those
Robots can be produced on a nano scale and can be inserted into ventilation and heating systems to give feedback for maintenance schedules
Asian Cairns by Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut
A
rchitecture is the science and art of a building created by combining materials and systems to work in harmony with nature. Whether
caves, igloos, mud huts or 21st-century commercial icons, all buildings use materials and technological adaptations to create environmental conditions suitable to their occupants’ needs. A purely passive building uses simple means, like orientation, mass and forms to achieve the optimum environment without any technological systems. In contrast to this, James Law, an architect working in Hong Kong, describes a new
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architecture that integrates the traditional elements of a building with new technologies that go well beyond the obvious, calling it Cybertecture. ‘In the 21st century, buildings will be different from the 20th century,’ he writes. ‘They are no longer about concrete, steel and glass, but also the new intangible materials of technology, multimedia, intelligence and interactivity. Only recognising this will bring a new form of architecture to light, namely a Cybertecture.’ A highly significant area of development
will be in smart materials, which will revolutionise the way that the building façade, and the materials used for equipment, can be designed. Material scientists can already alter the properties of materials by working at a molecular level. Nanotechnology is having a large influence on the properties of materials by allowing modification at a molecular level, and practical examples already being seen, include concrete that is lighter but many times stronger than traditional concrete (the work of Pacheco-Torgal in Portugal, for example). It can be expected that glass will eventually become as thermally efficient as other materials.
found in nature, are feasible. Materials embedded with graphene, as well as nanotubes, will offer a wider range of properties than we are accustomed to. The development of prefabricated self-assembly units using 3D and 4D industrial printing is another significant area. According to the US architect Skylar Tibbits, 4D printing may lead to self-constructing buildings, made of units that are self-adjusting and even keep creating. In contrast to this advanced technological approach, industrial hemp is a renewable crop material that offers low embodied energy, high thermal mass, is hygroscopic and sufficiently airtight – even if hemp constructions do allow a trickle of air through them. Strawbale construction has also been used successfully by architect Sarah Wigglesworth in the UK, for example. Rammed earth is another sustainable approach advocated by architects like Martin Rauch in the US and Anna Heringer in Germany. The Japanese architect Shigeru Ban is noted for his work with recycled cardboard. Waste composites also offer immense possibilities for construction. Animals and plants can teach us a lot about
how to be economic with the use of energy and materials. Biomimetics can be expected to offer lessons from nature that can be applied to architecture. For some time now, structural forms used in construction have mimicked those seen in plants and trees, but there is still much to learn. These developments mean the façades
of buildings will, as Law expressed, become communication channels between climate
February 2014 CIBSE Journal 47
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