Beyond Green: Growing Algae Facade

As the popularity of glass façades in buildings continue to rise, the environmental impact of using glass façade systems is of increasing concern. Due to their high energy consumption through heat loss and unwanted heat gain, there needs to be a growing effort to promote an environmentally sustainable façade system. As a sustainable facade alternative, an innovative algae façade system was explored in this paper. The primary goal of this research is to demonstrate the design and development of the algae façade system and describe its preliminary structural and thermal performance using a FEA (finite element analysis) software and experimentation. The system details were explored throughout the prototyping of an algae façade panel. The research findings have demonstrated the viable application and improved performance characteristics of the algae façade system compared to a conventional glass façade system. The paper highlights areas of ongoing research activities and challenges associated with the algae façade system.