SymbioSys

Abstract

The negative effects of global climate change are experienced more clearly every day, meaning that significant alterations across all causing sectors are necessary. However, the influence of the building industry as one of the most polluting sectors, is immense, but therefore this industry also has a high potential in mitigating the greenhouse gas emissions by applying circular design principles, such as circulating products and materials, and thereby designing a more sustainable, circular and healthy living environment. Additionally, increasing the amount of nature in the built environment will also contribute to this manner, nonetheless the ongoing trend of urbanisation causes a challenging dilemma between facilitating more residences and adding extra nature to the cities. Hence, new strategies of greening cities are essential to resolve this problem, at which utilising building envelopes as hosting surfaces for fostering vegetation and fauna form a highly potential solution.

Therefore, the main objective of this thesis is to design a low-tech, three-dimensional, circular façade cladding system which utilises waste materials and fosters local biodiversity in urban areas. To properly design and develop this cladding system, research has been conducted through literature and case study review in the fields of circular design and biodiversity implementation in the façade industry and by physical and digital design experimentation and modelling.

Whereas, the research phase resulted in various potential low-tech manufacturing techniques, suitable reclaimed materials, modular and Design-for-Disassembly design principles and a selection of building-reliant flora and fauna species to implement in the design of the system, collectively facilitating the guidelines for the design phase. Finally, after an extensive design process a three-dimensional façade system derived consisting of three main modular elements, constructed from merely five unique planar components. Through the principle of rotation, a total of nine variations of the modules are generated, which facilitates not only the implementation of local biodiversity, but also creates an intriguing architectural language.

From this thesis, various conclusions have been drawn, including that in order to optimise the circular value of the design, the decision has been made to select the majority of the waste materials based on their local availability whenever the system is implemented in a certain location and at a specific timeframe. Moreover, the low-tech design strategy contributes to the involvement of the system’s end-users, eventually accelerating the transitioning process and furthermore increasing people’s awareness, knowledge and interest regarding circular, sustainable and nature-inclusive design subjects.