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Climate-Active Layers for Heat Mitigation in the Built Environment: From Reflective Material Interfaces to Building Skins

Zhan Shi (Dissertation In Preparation)

Climate-Active Layers across Material, Building, and Urban Scales. Zhan Shi
Climate-Active Layers across Material, Building, and Urban Scales. This diagram illustrates the dissertation’s research scope, showing how climate-active surfaces—including reflective materials, adaptive façades, radiant cooling systems, shading structures, and urban surfaces—mediate heat exchange between the environment and the human body. Across material, building, and urban scales, the research examines both passive and active/adaptive strategies for reducing heat exposure and improving thermal comfort. Mean Radiant Temperature (MRT) serves as the primary human-centered evaluation metric, while COP and exergy are used to assess active cooling performance. Source: Zhan Shi
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Climate-Active Layers across Material, Building, and Urban Scales. Zhan Shi
Climate-Active Layers across Material, Building, and Urban Scales. This diagram illustrates the dissertation’s research scope, showing how climate-active surfaces—including reflective materials, adaptive façades, radiant cooling systems, shading structures, and urban surfaces—mediate heat exchange between the environment and the human body. Across material, building, and urban scales, the research examines both passive and active/adaptive strategies for reducing heat exposure and improving thermal comfort. Mean Radiant Temperature (MRT) serves as the primary human-centered evaluation metric, while COP and exergy are used to assess active cooling performance. Source: Zhan Shi

Areas

DISSERTATION

This dissertation investigates how architectural and urban surfaces can reduce human heat exposure and improve thermal comfort in response to increasing urban heat stress. It develops the concept of Climate-Active Layers to examine how material interfaces, building envelopes, shading systems, radiant cooling panels, and urban surfaces influence thermal exchange between the environment and the human body.

The research explores both passive and active/adaptive heat-mitigation strategies, including reflective materials, adaptive façades, low-exergy radiant cooling systems, climate-responsive shading structures, and reflective pavements. Through material testing, field measurements, environmental simulation, and control-system development, it examines how these systems affect solar radiation, heat transfer, and thermal comfort.

Mean Radiant Temperature (MRT) serves as the primary human-centered metric for evaluating thermal exposure, while COP and exergy are used to assess active cooling performance. The research aims to support lower-energy approaches to cooling while improving thermal comfort across material, building, and urban scales.

Zhan Shi