Dr. Negar Matin, Assistant Professor of Interior Design, and her research collaborators recently presented a research paper at the Façade Tectonics 2022 World Congress, hosted by the Façade Tectonics Institute in Los Angeles. The Façade Tectonics World Congress is an opportunity for industry experts, researchers, and educators to share highly curated findings about technology and design surrounding building façades.
Dr. Matin’s research lab, the OU High-Performance Interior Architecture Laboratory, collaborated with Dr. Mirabedini from Eastern Michigan University to develop a series of smart, clear coatings for window glass panes that could turn to different colors and shades in response to the intensity of the exposed solar radiation. The shifting colors and shades could allow building façades to both save energy and enhance users’ visual comfort. They presented the results of this research in the article “Smart Colored Window Technology: Improving Users’ Comfort with an Interdisciplinary Approach.”
As the abstract of the paper describes, researchers took inspiration from the colored glass in the Orosi structures in traditional Persian architecture. The researchers write, “The colored glass used in Orosi structures controls the sunlight penetration and creates dramatic light patterns in the interior space of the building.”
Zhina Rashidzadeh, a PhD Student in Planning, Design, and Construction at Gibbs College under the mentorship of Dr. Matin, also attended the conference on behalf of the research team to share the research results with the Façade Tectonics community.
Read the article’s abstract and find a link to the full article below.
Abstract:
Traditional architecture can be a valuable source of inspiration for designers. Sustainable design concepts in traditional architecture have been explored by architects based on the regional environment for many years. Colored glass has been the main element of Orosi structures in traditional Persian architecture utilized in building facades. The colored glass used in Orosi structures controls the sunlight penetration and creates dramatic light patterns in the interior space of the building.
Smart windows, a promising category of advanced building technologies, have the ability to change their properties by responding to the variations in environmental conditions and thereby offer considerable energy savings. Colored glass windows, on the other hand, can improve occupants’ visual comforts by controlling solar discomfort effects such as glare and overloading light. The contemporary smart window technologies such as electrochromic or thermochromic glazing and photovoltaic technologies operate by selectively blocking and transmitting visual and near-infrared (NIR) solar radiation. The studies on these technologies are mainly centered on energy saving and are only designed in a limited color range, undermining the aesthetic aspects and users’ comfort. To the best of our knowledge, smart colored windows that combine energy-saving capabilities with enhanced users’ visual comfort are not sufficiently explored.
This study aims to develop a series of smart, clear coatings for window glass panes that could turn to different colors/shades by responding to the intensity of the exposed solar radiation. Thus, the proposed advanced smart window technology not only can reduce energy consumption by controlling the amount of transmitted daylight but can improve the visual comfort metrics through changing colors.
The smart coatings developed under this study will be applied on glass substrates and will be extensively studied for their optical properties (UV-Vis spectroscopy), simulation of a building envelope utilized for proposed technology using Rhino software, and evaluation of performance by measuring visual and thermal comfort metrics using ClimateStudio plug-in. The novel smart window technology is a promising alternative to the current products in the market.
Find the full article here.