Adaptive Textile Facades Through the Integration of Shape Memory Alloy

The R&D project ADAPTEX showcases a material-driven and computationally informed design approach to adaptive textile facades through the integration of shape memory alloy (SMA) as an actuator. The results exhibit thermally responsive and self-sufficient sun-shading solutions with innovative design potential that enhance the energy performance of the built environment. With regard to climate targets, an environmentally viable concept is proposed that reduces the energy required for climatization, is lightweight, and can function as a refurbishment system. Two concepts—ADAPTEX Wave and ADAPTEX Mesh—are being developed to be tested as full-scale demonstrators for facade deployment by an interdisciplinary team from architecture, textile design, facade engineering, and material research. The two concepts follow a material-driven, low-complexity design strategy and differ in type of kinetic movement, textile construction, integration of the SMA, reset force, and scale of permeability. In this paper, we describe the computational design process and tools to develop and design current and future prototypes and demonstrators, providing insights on the challenges and potentials of developing textiles with integrated shape memory alloys for architectural applications.