Algae and Building Façade Revisited. A Study of Façade System for Infill Design

Abstract

Buildings account for around 30 percent of the world’s total energy consumption and a similar percentage of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions the main cause of climate change. The building sector is a major energy consumer, and empirical research reveals that carbon-dioxide emissions from the building sector exceed those of the industry and transport sectors. Contextual juxtaposition has commonly been applied in designing a new building in the historic district. In the realm of design, such philosophy-based design approach requires objective measurements. When new glass building considered, the question on greenhouse gas emissions becomes significant. To minimize energy consumption and reduce sun glare, brise-soleil and horizontal fixed shading devices have been used as elements of building’s facade. Nowadays, algae as part of building facade system have been used in creating a healthier indoor environment. This paper is written based on an on-going architectural design-based research on the use and role of algae as part of the building facade system. The new building of ITB Innovation Park is used as an infill project. With the help of modelling and extensive literature survey, this research will investigate how far the building (facade) design is affected by considerations on energy consumption pattern and environmental condition.

Algae Facade Technology in Improving Air Quality and Building Health: Analysis of Microclimate and Growth ofAspergillus niger

“…This result is alike [7] that mentioned the algae-PBR could decrease the indoor's temperature when the outside temperature was lower. He also indicated algae-PBR could increase the temperature when the outside was low by releasing heat from algae-PBR that was exposed by solar radiation during the daytime [7].…”

“…Furthermore, when the outside humidity was higher due to the absence of heat from the sun or called peak phase (6.00 p.m. to 8.00 a.m.), the PBR chambers had a lower humidity value than the control chamber (Figure 5b). This finding is related to the heat that is released by PBR during the low temperature of the outside [7]. Furthermore, the heat exposed by algae to the chamber will determine the humidity value since the correlation between temperature-humidity is already stated [14].…”

“…This effect occurs because microalgae cells absorb the abiotic components of the sun for photosynthesis [4]- [6]. Another study controlling the temperature that is too high between outdoor and indoor on devices installed with algae PBR was presented by [7]. Meanwhile, [8] tested the symbiosis of algae and buildings to control room temperature in summer and winter.…”

New trends in biotechnological applications of photosynthetic microorganisms

“…However, this drawback was found to lead to the most constant year-round operating conditions, thus facilitating proper time and process management. Comparable studies have also been conducted in other parts of the world: USA (Decker et al, 2016;Kim, 2013), Indonesia (Martokusumo et al, 2017), and Italy (Pagliolico et al, 2017). A similar window was designed by Negev et al (2019), however, two microalgae species were used: Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and Chlorella vulgaris.…”

Fungal photosensors

“…The world's drive for sustainability dictates a need to develop 'green architectures', where buildings are made from natural, recyclable materials and incorporate living matter in their constructions [26,18]. Recent examples include algae facades [19,25], buildings incorporating bio-reactors [35] and buildings made from pre-fabricated blocks of substrates colonised by fungi [31,3,8]. Not long ago we proposed growing monolith constructions from live fungal materials, where living mycelium coexist with dry mycelium functionalised with nanoparticles and polymers [2].…”