ARCHITECTURE INSPIRED BY THE BIOMIMCRY THROUGH A DOUBLE SKIN FACADE TO IMPROVE SUSTAINABILITY
Humans have been surrounded by nature since their creation. Everything in the natural world is well-organized and harmonious. Nature is seen as a source of inspiration for humans in a variety of domains. Biomimicry is a new approach of seeing and appreciating nature that contributes to make the built environment resemble like living beings. The built environment is at the forefront of the discussion on how to reduce the environmental impact on the earth and its inhabitants and the exhaustion of the unrenewable resources. In the hot desert region, Double-Skin Façade (DSF) is a method that can achieve equilibrium between user demands and energy efficiency and thermal comfort. The purpose of this article was to investigate the effect of using a double skin façade instead of a single skin façade as the exterior of an office building in Egypt to improve building performance. Design builder software was used for modeling the existed case studies for cooling loads, energy efficiency and thermal comfort simulations. The effect of double skin façade introduction classified into three groups such as air cavity depth, shading devices and glazing types resulted in 8 modeled cases for examination. Each parameter is examined individually to be compared to the base case in each case study to determine its influence separately on the energy consumption performance. In all double skin façade types, results showed that all cases were successful and are better than the single skin façade. Shading devices added ameliorate the general building performance as well as the low e and reflective glass used as substitution of the existed tinted glass.
Biomimicry, Double Skin Façade, Energy Efficiency, Thermal Comfort