Design of Mobile Sunshades Inspired by Plant Forms to Improve Natural Light and Ventilation

Moving and shape-changing sunshades are one of the most suitable solutions for energy savings in building consumption, and architecture can have a significant impact on it. In architecture, through spatial arrangements, structural movements enable buildings to respond specifically to internal and external stimuli. Such structures are made up of rigid and inflexible materials or soft and flexible ones, or a combination of both. Furthermore, the development of new materials in the field of architecture has increased the possibility of using movable walls in recent years. Such structures require characteristics such as lightness, resistance, and the ability to return to their original form. Due to the novelty of these architectural structures and their excellent performance if properly designed, there is a need for innovative studies and research, with one of their main components being the design of the elements of these structures and their mechanisms. This article attempts to address the finding of a suitable design for the mechanisms generating shape changes in these movable and shape-changing facades with a bionic approach and inspired by the structure of plant leaves. This research focuses on plants because, like buildings, they are stationary in a specific location and are therefore very similar to buildings. By employing a hierarchical process, the attempt is made to find suitable patterns from nature, extract architectural ideas from these patterns, and present a design using the ideas obtained. The research method is descriptive-analytical based on reviewing specialized texts through library resources and discussing with experts in biological sciences, ultimately presenting a proposed design with software modeling for a portion of the building facade.

Keywords:

Bionic architecture , movable walls , shape-changing facades , energy-saving