Thermal Architecture Lab, in collaboration with Polyhedral Structures Laboratory and Shu Yang Group at UPenn, Texas A&M University, City College of New York, and Kieran Timberlake, is designing carbon-negative, medium-sized building structures by developing a high-performance structural system for carbon absorption and storage over buildings’ lifespan. The team will use a novel carbon-absorbing concrete mixture as a building material, and design and assemble a high-performance structural system with minimized mass and construction waste, and maximized surface area. The parts will be prefabricated using robotic 3D printing technology.
Using the carbon-absorbing floor structure as thermal mass, the design reduces both operational and embodied carbon throughout building life span. The basic principle of building thermal mass is that the storage material absorbs and stores heat during the day and releases it at night, with the aid of natural ventilation. In this manner, building thermal mass provides indoor temperature damping and shift, and alleviates over-reliance on mechanical cooling. Excitingly, intelligent geometry can augment thermal mass performance, while minimizing the material volume, thereby reducing the added embodied carbon associated with material use.
PI and co-PIs: Masoud Abarzadeh, Dorit Aviv, Shu Yang, Zheng O’Neill, Damon Bolhassani, Ryan Welch, Pete Psarras.
Student Team at TAL: Zherui Wang (project lead), Xiaoxiao Peng, Hemant Diyalani, Yuto Morishita.
TAL Collaborators: Salmaan Craig, Jihun Kim, Saeran Vasanthakumar
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