Investigating the impact of bio-inspired façade design on indoor environment

Bio-inspiration is a growing research field in architecture and urban design where this framework is being used to design and develop sustainable solutions and strategies for improving the overall built environment. In buildings, the façade is the most critical element which differentiates the indoor environment from the outdoor environment. The research related to the quantification of the impact of bio-inspired façade on the indoor environment is limited. This research, therefore, aims to evaluate the impact of three-dimensional retro-reflective design on the building facade. The retro-reflective design can functionally perform to reflect off the incident solar radiation along with providing an aesthetical appeal. The research has been conducted on a (2-storey) typical residential building in the United Kingdom using computational simulation. Test building with bio-inspired façade i.e., retro-reflective design is developed in SketchUp and simulated using OpenStudio and EnergyPlus software. The results were compared against the baseline model with similar dimensions (without the bio-inspired design). The surface inside face temperatures and zone air temperatures are analysed to investigate the impact on the indoor environment. The result shows that the bio-inspired façade design reduces the façade internal surface temperature by up to 3.7°C and zone air temperature by up to 1.9°C under UK’s weather conditions during summer.