Metals in Construction magazine has announced the winners of its 2024 Design Challenge, which asked architects and facade specialists to submit their concepts for a curtain wall constructed with the highest possible efficiency properties, serviceability characteristics, and recyclability of constituent parts.
The winning entry in this year’s Design Challenge is a facade system rather than a building design. The R-IOT (Revolutionary Internet of Things) project, revealed after jury deliberations to be the work of the Berlin-based firm Priedemann Facade Experts, combines a dismountable unitized facade system (Fig. 1) with a physical/digital interface that monitors the performance status of components via integrated sensors and a digital representation of the system. (The abbreviation, Priedemann representatives say, combines the Internet Of Things with an intentionally ambiguous initial that could designate Revolutionary, Renovation, Refurbishment,Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and others.)
During the jury’s assessment of competition entries, juror Vishwadeep Deo, a vice president at Thornton Tomasetti hailed this proposal’s innovations: “keeping digital twins andmachine learning and AI (artificial intelligence) to run early detection and preventative pattern recognition.” The jury unanimously found that R-IOT, although it did not offer a site-specific design for the Broadway address described in the competition’s design brief, more than made up for that aspect by proposing a modular concept that can improve the longevity and performance of any curtain-wall system.
Described in the competition entry as “Revolutionary Cyber-Physical Maintenance andRenovation Strategies to Extend the Lifespan of Facade Constructions,” the R-IOT system renders energy-intensive facade refurbishments unnecessary by taking what it calls a”precognitive” approach to continuous monitoring and maintenance (Fig. 2). By continually providing data on three main interdependent parameters—building energy efficiency, occupant comfort, and facade component conditions—the system identifies degradations in performance proactively rather than reactively. When expected and measured performance diverge and components approach a predefined threshold value for failure, the system gives stakeholders a warning that enables timely and appropriate interventions in the form of component removal and replacement or maintenance (Figs. 3, 4).
The infill, spandrel, and terminal elements of the R-IOT facade are all designed for deconstruction, with standardized components in replaceable cassettes accessible from the interior. Transparent, opaque, or partially opaque infill elements can include features such as openable windows, shading systems, and other mechanical elements; sealants, gaskets, and membranes between facade elements are accessible when the infill element is removed. Opaque spandrel elements, the interface between the facade system and the building structure, accommodate a range of cladding elements, potentially including photovoltaics or green wall systems; supporting terminal elements allow staged removal of the system and access to hidden components such as removable polyamide thermal breaks. Chemical bonding is minimized, used only where unavoidable, as in IGUs or laminated glass. A mobile glass-handling machine enables on-site maintenance or retrofitting operations, reducing downtime and carbon emissions from transportation and heavy machinery use.
The system can also accommodate new design elements and material technologies as they appear, allowing aesthetic upgrades in the form of exchanged cladding or insulating components. R-IOT’s designers are “pointing to the fact that there is a relationship between these things, and that the service life of an assembly is determined by its weakest link,” commented juror Mic Patterson of the Facade Tectonics Institute. “Their approach is that it all needs to be replaceable…. With this kind of strategy, the service life is an irrelevant term, because what you have is a perpetual service life: as long as you can maintain the thing, you can go 1,000 years, and you may not have an original part in the assembly, but it’s seen continuous service.”
Jurors acknowledge that while the winning entry satisfies the requirements of the brief, a fully realized version of R-IOT will need to address practical questions such as specification of resilient materials and the mechanisms of sensor function. “Looking at U values and the glass performance,” observes juror Vivian Fu, an associate principal at Heintges in San Francisco, “the deterioration of the facade, a lot of times, is about air leaks and water leaks. Where’s the detection of that?” Stanford Chan, a senior principal at Socotec, questions whether the system should incorporate exterior access for maintenance, considering the disruption to occupants that interior access may cause. Use of standardized components, Patterson also notes, can imply potential creative constriction: “The problem with modularity is, how do you give the architects freedom of expression with a modular concept?” That the R-IOT proposal stimulates such discussion, however, commented Jack Robbins, partner and director of urban design atFXCollaborative, is “a good sign that we’re getting into little details: how does this actually work?”
The winning team will receive the 2024 competition’s $15,000 grand prize. The winning entry may be viewed in full below. Watch discussion of the winning entry and the 2024 competition themes via the “Curtain Wall Design for Longevity” course on Architectural Record’sContinuing Education Center: continuingeducation.bnpmedia.com. 1 AIA LU/HSW. For more information about the annual competition, visit metalsinconstruction.org. A special thanks to this year’s jury: Stanford Chan, Socotec; Vishwadeep Deo, Thornton Tomasetti; Vivian Fu, Heintges; Mic Patterson, Facade Tectonics Institute; and Jack Robbins, FXCollaborative
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