Introduction To Kinetic Facades

Beginner's guide to climate responsive facades and design process

What you'll learn

Identify types of kinetic facades

Recognize climate responsive elements

Understand integration in design

Know-how of examples

Requirements

This course is about dynamic facades on buildings.

This is a beginner level course. There are no prerequisites.

Description

For a long period of time, architecture had been considered ‘static’ for most purposes. However, starting from basic individual ‘moving elements’ like doors, windows, elevators, etc., technology has helped architects to design buildings that move as a whole or a part. Kinetic elements have more commonly found expression as media and interactive facades. This course covers many interesting examples of facades.
Further, integration of kinetics into the façade inorder to modulate daylight, shading and/or ventilation have taken the climate responsive design to the next level. Not only such buildings are interactive, they serve specific functions to enhance occupant comfort with reduced energy use. This course will enumerate interesting projects having climate responsive facades.
The dynamic nature of such facades requires that the design process to be iterative assessing numerous design and functional parameters to arrive at a optimized solutions. An example of such a performative design process using a suite of simulation tools is discussed in the last module of the course. 
The course is structured in 6 modules with two instructors and a moderator. This content is highly visual and engaging. At the end of the course, you can confidently identify what kinetic facades are and the iterative design process that is required to design such facades. 

Overview

Section 1: Kinetic Facades

Lecture 1 Introduction

Lecture 2 Module 1: Introduction to kinetic facades

Lecture 3 Module 2: History and evolution

Lecture 4 Module 3: Integration in built form

Lecture 5 Module 4: Responsive Facades

Lecture 6 Module 5: Project Showcase

If you are fascinated about moving elements on a buildings, you are interested in understanding dynamic facades,Even if you are not familiar with building design or architecture, but you are just curious to known about kinetic facades, then this course is for you !