Climate-active building enclosures: An integrative literature review

The  building  energy  demand  and  anthropogenic  greenhouse  gas  emissions  have  risen since  the  preindustrial  period,  reaching  the  highest  levels.  Brazil  is  the  eighth  largest consumer  of  primary  energy  globally,  with  buildings  accounting  for  51.2%  of the  total electric   energy   consumption.   In   this   sense,   the   building   enclosure   has   substantial potential  and  the  lowest  cost  for  reducing  energy  expenditure.  The  dynamicity  of environmental  factors  allows  for  many  design  approaches,  and  since  the  user  comfort analysis evolved, time-varying building skin configurations emerged. When coupled with computational design, the building's skins no longer must compromise to one stationary condition that is never optimal to any particular condition. These climate-active envelopes need  a  seemingly  conveyed  characterization  or  a  straightforward  design  process  as  a relatively new technique. We aimed to differentiate climate-active building typologies and gather  the  latest  compositions  and  performance  assessment  metrics,  rendering  an integrative  literature  review,  state-of-the-art,  and  bibliometric  analysis.  As  the  main results,  we  assembled  tabular  data  on  100  research  pieces  considering  various  study methodologies,   climate-active   typologies,   movement   categories,   actuation styles, simulation engines, and performance criteria, demonstrating that most studies evaluated facade typologies, concerned temperate climates and adopted simple, binary movement characterizations.  Furthermore,  the  design  process for  active  building enclosures needs to  be  clearer  and  well-structured,  and  the  available  computational  tools  still  need improvement.