What is Biofacade?

“Biofacade” is a biological building skin which help  balancing  Natural Environment and Built Environment. It derived from the idea of  increasing green area for the city in an innovative way.         

Work include designing innovative green facade and roof as well as carrying out experiment on their environmental performance.

It is a research funded by KURDI
(Kasetsart University Research and Development Institute)  under The Special Research Unit of Green Building Innovation since 2007.

Background

Increasing green area is standard solution for every big cities, in order to reduce heat island effect and mitigate CO2 . Unluckily, high density city cannot allow enough open space for more green area. Greening the building by applying green roof or green facade are now becoming popular solution to increase green area by occupying minimum space but can reduce heat transfer and enhance air quality effectively.

Leaves of plants  contain special quality which can never be found in any building materials. Besides absorbing carbondioxide in photosynthesis process, it also absorp solar radiation and turn it to latent heat in evapo-transpiration, reduce heat transfer through building, reduce reflection and radiation to atmosphere. The more leaves and layers, the more efficient in heat reduction and CO2 absorption.  Plants covering shading for windows can protect solar radiation and cool down building more efficiently than concrete shading. Different form of plant shading  will give different effect in heat reduction. The side-effect of  plants, increasing of humidity , need to be investigated especially when applied in the Tropical Environment.

Last update 1 Febuary 2010(c) webmaster@biofacade.com