Imagine buildings with exterior walls acting like skin and react to their environment: which retract when it’s cold, if it’s glass it could block – or not – light and heat, … That’s what teams of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania are working on – or are thinking about. The goal would be to make buildings’ skins sensing and react to some parameters. There are no indications – yet – on what those skins would look like or how efficient they would be, but the idea is simple: putting sensors onto the walls of buildings, which would control mechanisms, helped by high-tech softwares. The difficulty of that idea: creating a wall which could move and adapt to situations quickly and efficiently. Classic systems are already source of problems and maintenance, but high tech systems like that would be hard to create, maintain and use properly. Although, new technologies may allow us to create such systems easily.

The picture above has nothing to do with this research, this is Bouygues Immobilier’s HQ, but intelligent walls could look like that: walls which interact with exterior light, heat, but also which ventilate the building, …. The idea is not entirely new: the Institut du monde arabe in Paris is already featuring some systems, behind its windows, which are suppose to let or stop light to pass through, depending on time. But those systems are only programed to act a certain way during a day, they’re not interacting with their environment – and moreover they don’t work!

Source: Popsci