Taxonomical Investigation of Self-Sufficient Kinetic Building Envelopes

Currently, most descriptions of low-energy buildings assume that the envelope acts as a barrier against energy loss. However, this approach does not focus on the potential exploitation of favorable contributions from the surrounding environment that could lead to additional improvements in performance. Adaptive building envelopes (ABEs) offer a number of different options for this. However, many of them require the supply of a certain energy amount to operate. A viable alternative is offered by self-sufficient solutions that adopt responsive materials-based actuators, which are capable of modifying some of their properties in response to environmental stimuli (e.g., temperature, humidity, light, and others), which determines the dynamic behavior of the envelope without requiring additional energy inputs and minimizing technical complexity. The research field into self-sufficient adaptive envelopes (SSAEs) has received a significant boost recently. Given the heterogeneity of the proposed solutions, this paper will report on a taxonomical investigation that will be performed on the available studies that deal with SSAEs, which highlight their role in innovation and will provide a systemic classification for applications to support future research.