What more can facade design do for the buildings we work in?

With the evolution of the workplace centred on flexibility, there’s one (large) element of the space we have yet to fully utilise: the building’s facade. What more can it do for us and for the environment at large? We take a look at two projects investigating the matter – one using biophilia and the other using algae.

Humankind has become an indoor species. Various studies around the world have shown that we spend between 87 and 93 per cent of our lives indoors, with most waking hours spent in a workplace.

In this issue of Cubes, we’ve talked a great deal about the evolution and diversification of the workplace interior to accommodate the necessary flexibility in the age of disruption, and to cater to the increasingly health-conscious workforce.

But what about the facade of the commercial building? Beyond equipping the glazing with smart and environmentally friendly technologies (HP Inc. Singapore Headquarters on page 78 is an example), what have the architecture and design communities around the world come up with for facade design?

“Typically we have very little interaction with or control over the facades of our office buildings, especially with the introduction of automated building control. For many of us working in an office, the facade only gives us a visual connection to the outdoors,” says New York-based facade consultant Oliver Thomas. Last year he and fellow facade consultant Keyan Rahimzadeh created Pixel Facade

– a conceptual modular facade system that turns the typical glazed facade into a biophilic indoor-outdoor interface. The concept was a finalist in Metals in Construction Magazine’s 2018 Design Challenge, whose brief called for next-gen facade designs.

The concept is a re-think of both the workplace of the future that puts people and their wellbeing at the centre of the design, and typical design and construction processes. The titular ‘pixel’ is a modular space constructed from a kit of parts comprising elements made with Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) and Glulam. Each

‘pixel’ can be customised with a combination of 12 structural and architectural elements that include various planters, operable plant shaders, and glazing both fixed and operable.

Pixel Facade can be installed at the perimeter of an existing office building to serve as its outdoor extension. Thomas, who spent some years working and living in Hong Kong, shares that the project would be especially suitable for the tropical climate, and that many buildings in Singapore with their easy indoor-outdoor transition provided inspiration for Pixel Facade’s design.

Thomas and Rahimzadeh have since founded a collective called Pixel to develop the concept further with a network of architects, engineers and makers located in London, New York and Hong Kong.

In London, architectural and urban design firm ecoLogicStudio has been imagining the building facade as a living, breathing organism by incorporating algae. Helmed by AA graduates Claudia Pasquero and

Marco Poletto, the studio focuses on experimental bio-digital design for future spaces and human behaviours. One of the studio’s strands of investigation looks at implementing permanent biological skins in urban context. The latest iteration of this investigation was displayed as an installation titled Photo.Synth.Etica during the Climate Innovation Summit 2018 in Dublin.

Photo.Synth.Etica saw algae-filled bioplastic curtain modules

(16.2 x 7 metres in size) covering the facade of Printworks – a 1980s office building in Dublin. Each module served as a photobioreactor, processing about one kilogram of CO2 per day – said to be an equivalent amount processed by 20 large trees – into reusable biomass, and releasing oxygen into the air.

“Smart cities, smart homes, autonomous vehicles, robotic factories, et cetera dominate the current panorama of popular futuristic scenarios, but they all desperately need morphological, spatial and architectural re-framing to engender beneficial societal transitions,” say Pasquero and Poletto. They suggest that the algae curtain could pave the way there.

Digitally designed and fabricated, the curtain is translucent, soft and makes for an ideal cladding solution or an element to mediate the indoor-outdoor transition. The modules can be implemented on facades both new or in need of retrofit, in any part of the world. Explain Pasquero and Poletto, “The system can host several strands of microalgae and has a farming protocol that operates on the basis of microclimatic sensors. Both these aspects enable fine tuning to specific contexts of climate and urban setting.”

In fact, ecoLogicStudio is currently developing a 3D-printed version of the algae curtain and will test it in Bangkok, where the one of the studio’s partners is currently running the research.

This version will allow for higher porosity and three-dimensional articulation. “It will create the possibility for thick biophilic architectural membranes that we predict will be particularly suited for tropical climates,” they say.

A permanent micro-algae skin is currently in the works for a museum in Innsbruck, Austria. The studio plans to scale up and launch the curtain to the market next year. “We are searching for early adopters that are willing to test the system on their buildings and plan to have four or five facades up and running by early 2020,” they add. Any takers?