Deze projecten zijn mede mogelijk gemaakt door diverse fondsen van de Europese Unie.
The DEW Cooling Façade is a market product that intends to integrate building facades into the collective effort towards climate adaptation by designing a clever solution that reduces the impacts of climate change. In other words a climate resilient façade system.
The innovative prototype reduces outdoor temperatures by the principle of adiabatic cooling and the downdraft effect created by water evaporation, thus the name DEW Cooling Faced. It channels the cooled air to strategic urban areas (squares, parks, commercial streets, train/bus stops, children's playgrounds, hospital courtyards, etc.) during heatwaves, providing enhanced spaces (urban oases) to citizens and improving their thermal comfort during heat stress conditions.
We analyze and optimize the amount of water sprayed, the air temperature reduction, the speed of the generated downdraft, and the potential increase in the thermal comfort of people in the vicinity.
Apart from Cooling outdoor spaces and increasing Human thermal comfort, the DEW Cooling Façade additionally produces multiple co-benefits that support climate change adaptation. Working as a ventilated façade, the prototype reduces the energy needed by the building for cooling indoor spaces.
With an optimal combination of materials, technologies and design; it may store rainwater during the rainy season and use it during the dry season; enhancing the area's capacity for flooding and droughts. Finally, the façade system may be designed with a "green wall" principle to support other urban ecosystem services.
As a first of its kind, we present a climate-resilient faced system. For instance: when too hot, the face helps cool down the building's outdoor vicinities; when it is rainy, it captures and stores rainwater; and when to dry, it uses (sanitized) rainwater to increase thermal comfort and water nearby vegetation. The prototype has been tested at The Green Village (TGV) since October 2022.
The objective is to create a market-ready modular system with the possibility of different configurations. For instance: the “basic product” supports human thermal comfort; meanwhile “, add-ons” enhances the façade system to provide other co-benefits, such as harvesting and purifying rainwater or introducing a green wall system. The idea is to test the different components separately and optimize them, to later, test them together; main reason why we believe that The Green Village is our best option for performing our research.
During the period at The Green Village, different configurations of the prototype will be tested in order to optimize it´s performance. A potential upgrade foreseen is using rainwater; it may be achieved by installing the necessary equipment to catch, store and sanitize rainwater. Such upgrade supports a closed-loop prototype that reduces the use of tap water from municipal sources.
