Origami-based adaptive facade for reducing reflected solar radiation in outdoor urban environment

This paper proposes an origami-based adaptive façade for reducing potentially harmful reflected solar radiation in outdoor urban environments. The Walkie-Talkie building in London is selected as case study due to numerous reported incidents related to the excessive reflected solar radiation of the building. The performance of an origami-based adaptive façade in reducing peak reflected solar radiation at the pedestrian level is investigated by means of computer simulations. The simulations are based on the hourly peak irradiance between 10 AM and 2PM of a day in August. Initially 10 different folded states of three different Miura-fold origami units were adopted, and the peak reflected irradiance were simulated with 15-minute intervals for each folded state. The results showed that, the best performing origami based adaptive façade can reduce the peak reflected solar irradiance by 61% in average, and up to 90% depending on the specific folded state and the time of the day