Multilayered and Green Building Envelope

Green building envelope systems that incorporate organic life matter and vegetation on the building exterior offer one solution to reduce Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect and decrease CO2 in the atmosphere while increasing building performance through passive cooling, wind buffering, and added insulation. While conventional green wall systems are often materially inefficient due to a lack of integration with functional building envelope layers, this research investigates the potential of large-scale 3D printing with robotic pellet extrusion to produce a novel integrative green building envelope system. The developed envelope system fosters the growth of a self-watering, diverse plant ecology to passively cool buildings, filter contaminants from polluted air, and attract diverse forms of wildlife. 

This research focuses on conceptualization, design, and development of prototypes of the Integrative Green Building Envelope (IGBE) system. The fabrication and computational methods developed through this research resulted in the successful 3D print of a geometrically-complex full-scale prototype with multiple layers that can be adapted and applied to many different architectural typologies and locations.