Façade Solar Control and Shading Strategies for Buildings in the Mediterranean Region

Abstract

In recent years, the growing awareness of the possibilities of biomimetic and adaptive materials in architecture has assumed a fundamental importance in the scientific domain, for the high performance of the building façades from an environmental point of view. To meet the housing and comfort needs in climates, such as the ones in the Mediterranean zones, characterized by ever-increasing temperatures, architectural technology must collaborate with nature in an even more decisive way, through increasingly smart and sustainable solutions. The paper reviews a collection of good practice examples of advances in material science, and the method used is to analyze the current performance of and building envelopes with smart façade skins, in order to suggest some potential applications in the Mediterranean basin and regions of the world with similar climatic characteristics. The latter case studies, especially, show built examples of adaptive buildings that could be adopted for use in Mediterranean regions. When the climate characteristics are somehow different, the good practices from elsewhere can be implemented in an innovative way.