MID

Culture and Climate Related Façade Design: MID2040, SoSe25

Project summary:

The module MID 2040 (former MID S5): Cultureand Climate-Related Façade Design is focused on raising awareness on how the local context can determine multiple key aspects for sustainable design, and how façade designers can operate within those conditions considering environmental, social, and economic performance. A series of workshops were conducted throughout the semester to allow students the chance to explore new concepts that they can also implement in their projects. The topics included vertical greenery systems, concepts for vertical real estate, unitized facade systems, life cycle assessment (with guest lecturer Dima Othman), and 15-minute cities (with guest lecturer Aylin Erol).

The main semester task was organizing the design of façades of similar geometric boundaries, but optimized for high performance in different climates and cultures. The exercise introduces a supposed “client” that requests the design and engineering of these façades, having explicit expectations: every proposal must demonstrate a contribution to at least one domain (environmental performance, social value, or economic profit) while remaining as coherent architecture (e.g. that would be approved by local regulations).

The building presented has a height of 12 meters and a front of 9 meters. Physical models of the building structure were constructed in MDF, in a scale of 1:25 and 1:50 to provide a canvas for student projects in the final presentation.