Multilayered Building Envelope

This project develops computational design and robotic 3d printing technologies for an integrated building envelope system that combines the many functions of the conventional floor-wall-roof systems. Instead of assembling the many layers of cladding and plastic sheets to create weather resistance, vapor, and moisture barriers, the cladding and barriers are printed from plastic in one process. 

The focus of this research is to develop design solutions to integrate voids that would allow harboring translucent insulation materials like silica gel and phase change materials (PCM) for energy storage and to develop fabrication methods for successful 3D printing of the resulting form in full scale. In the prototype presented here, two topological regions are created. One connects an inner void with the outside and inside of the façade through apertures, and the other connects the inner void of the outer layer and inner layer. 

The outer surface is corrugated through a “reaction diffusion” algorithm, producing rib-like stiffeners which enhance the structural stability of the outer surface. Novel toolpath methods were developed to enable fabrication of this complex topology. Future work in this area will investigate the addition of translucent insulation materials like silica gel, as well as phase change materials (PCM) for energy storage. These materials can be placed within the envelope according to solar gain in interconnected passages which allow for efficient thermal transfer.

Dimensions of each panel: 2270 X1170 X200 (height X width X depth), 8 to 50 mm thickness of the outer layers

Material: thermoplastic PETG

The volume of material for one panel: 41.3 liters of polymer

Weight of one panel: 44.5 kilograms

Printing time of each panel: 44 hours

Number of mesh faces in the low-res panel: 70,000 

Number of mesh faces in the high-res panel: 840,000 

Toolpath Length in a low-resolution panel: 10,323 meters

Toolpath Length in high-resolution panel: 10,333 meters