Please join us for the latest event in our Technical Studies Open Lecture series.
‘… if we are to develop truly sustainable architecture, we don’t necessarily need more materials. We need smarter ones.’
- Doris Sung
In her ‘Bloom’ project, architect and inventor Doris Sung created a large lightweight monocoque structure comprised of 414 hyperbolic paraboloid (hypar) shaped panels made from a bimetal lamination of two alloys of nickel, manganese and iron with different thermal expansion coefficients.
Bloom is a wonderful exposition of the properties and potential of bimetals in the creation of new responsive building skins that can passively open and close to ventilate and shade the building. An animated film of the Bloom project shows how the surface is activated by sun and shade.
Doris Sung has subsequently developed a whole series of innovative architectural applications using thermobimetal. Her initial research on self-shading, self-ventilating and self-assembling alongside contemporary fabrication technologies has expanded the physical potential of the material, for example in the twisting and folding of her Oculus prototype, and she has now patented systems that are being commercialised for wider application.
Her InVert™ window-shading system incorporates small bimetal ‘petals’ within a double-glazed glass module, and as the temperature from the sun increases, the bimetal elements deform and block the sunlight and shade the building’s interior. As the sunlight moves and the temperature cools, the bimetal elements revert to their original shape and position. The resultant solar shading reduces heat gain, which in turn can reduce artificial cooling needs by 28–42%, 36 depending on the geographical location.
About the Technical Studies Lecture Series
The Technical Studies Open lecture program (part of University of Westminster’s School of Architecture and Cities) is an open lecture series, where architects, engineers, writers, social theorists and artists are invited to take part in a discussion about the social use and function of technology in the context of design.
For further details please visit the Technical Studies website, which also contains details of previous lectures in the series.
For more details contact Will McLean – [email protected].
