Utilization of Smart Materials to Develop Sustainability in Building Facades

Nowadays sustainable development is an inevitable necessity and is a process in which current needs of community are provided without affecting future generations. One of the important dimensions of this environmental process is sustainable design, which introduces sustainable indicators in construction. Regarding importance of this issue, unfortunately in Iran, sustainable design elements have been overlooked in constructions for many years. Facades as one of the most basic element of a building, is the most important interface between building and its surroundings and can play an effective role in creating such sustainability. To achieve this goal, intelligent materials could be considered in which by receiving and processing events and environmental information as well as properties such as adaptability, refinement, fast performance, automated performance, and immediacy, they can react appropriately to the environment. This paper seeks to provide solutions for their application in building facades by studying smart materials and comparative analysis of existing buildings. Two basic strategies are as follows: using intelligent materials in movable elements and inserts such as openings and canopies to enhance the performance of the facade in terms of sustainability and application of intelligent materials in a solid body that adds visual diversity and beauty.