Bioinspired Passive Solar Building Envelope Design, for Energy Sustainability

The purpose of this article is to create a knowledge transfer between biology and technology and to integrate this knowledge into the development of bio-inspired structures. Especially, this paper concerns the investigation of climate-adaptive building envelopes of bridge-soleil Architecture inspired by biomimetic solutions, providing a critical review of the state of the art. Scientists have recently resorted to the study of living organisms in nature to develop models that introduce novel perspectives on adaptation, change, and performance in architecture, to provide an answer to the question of how architecture could address sustainability issues where buildings will operate in built surroundings much like living things behave in the natural world. At the same time, the development of technologies helps engineers, architects, and designers inspired by bio-mimetics to recreate complex structures that exist in nature, using innovative construction methods and materials, with the aim of energy saving. The building shell is now constructed, not with traditional inert surfaces but with technologies based on the behavior of organisms found in nature. The strength of this approach is the identification and evaluation of multiple benefits related to the energy efficiency of biomimetic solutions. Thus, several paradigms of kinetic architecture will be presented to understand the importance and impact that the application of bio-inspiration in Architecture can have on the energy debate.