Seminar:

Evaporative Cooling in Athens

Essay: Passive Pond Facade

Stephen Burke
1

Student Name:

Stephen Burke

Student Number: 109591923

Module Code:

AT6012

Module Title:
Design Research:
Technology Transformations
Lecturers:

Kevin McCartney
Simon Conolly

Submission Date: 15 Jan 2016

Word Count:

Seminar - 1860
Essay
- 2794
Total
- 4654

Authors Note
It was the authors intention to produce
physical models of the prototype passive
pond facade presented later in this
essay. Unfortunately the equipment that
was intended to be used was not working
or available and therefore only digital
models and drawings of the prototype can
be presented.

Contents
Seminar: Evaporative Cooling in Athens

6 - 16

Presentation 6 - 15
Questions and Answers 16

Essay: Passive Pond Facade 17

Introduction 18
Materials and Material Properties

19 - 21

Case Studies 21

Cool Brick 21 - 22

Bio Skin - Sony Research and Development Center
22 - 24
Prototype - Passive Pond Facade
25

Design 26 - 28
Production and Manufacturing 29 - 31
Experimentation 32
Construction 32 - 33
Result 34

Bibliography 36
Image References 37

Seminar: Evaporative Cooling

What is evaporative Cooling?
It is a natural occurrence. The most
common example we all experience
is perspiration, or sweat. As
perspiration evaporates it absorbs
heat to cool your body.
So basically the heat of air is used
to evaporate water, thus cooling the
air, which in turn cools you or the
building. The air temperature drop
across an evaporative surface occurs
because the sensible heat in the air
is used to evaporate water and is
converted to latent heat. As you can
see in the diagram the sensible heat
is transferred to latent energy in the
moist air.
If you were to look at it
scientifically is one pound of water,
evaporating in one hour, is capable
of providing .09 tons of evaporative
cooling. Because this is a Law
of Nature, this cooling process
is dependable and economically
advantageous to use
This is nothing new. Evaporative
Cooling has been around since ancient
times. in paintings from Ancient
Egypt (2500 B.C.) it can be seen how
slaves fanned big vessels filled with
6

water, which were porous enough

to permit water to pass through
the ceramic wall, maintaining the
surface humid, and evaporating into
the air

second decade to the third decade (2003-2012). In Thessaloniki, the increase was 0.5C from the first to the
second decade and 0.6C from the second to the third decade. The total increase of the annual average
temperature from the first to the third decade was 1.2C and 1.1C for Athens and Thessaloniki respectively.

So why study evaporative cooling in

Athens?

Period
Jan.
Feb.
Mar.
Apr.
Mai
Jun.
Jul.
Aug.
Sep.
Okt.
Nov.
Dec.
Annual

1983-1992

Athens
1993-2002

2003-2012

1983-1992

Thessaloniki
1993-2002

2003-2012

17.50

18.51

18.74

15.57

16.04

16.66

9.83
6.13
6.34
It is also obvious that there is a constant9.44increase9.73in average
temperature
for both6.81cities and in all the
9.32
10.48
9.50
6.86
7.84
7.34
theThe
year.
During
summer,
ranges from
0.63
K
in
September
to
2.43
K in August for A
Well
figures
and chart
you are the increase 11.47
11.97
12.62
9.83
10.06
10.81
looking at are taken from a study in
15.77
15.74
16.25
14.58
14.17
14.74
from
0.42Observatory
K in September
for
Thessaloniki.
During
winter,
the
increase ranges fro
the
National
of Athens. to 1.74 K in August
19.93
21.34
21.40
18.86
19.62
20.05
They recorded the average monthly
24.42
26.34
26.31
23.31
24.22
25.02
in annual
February
to 1.51
for Athens
and
from
0.16
K
in
April
to 1.70 K in Dec
and
temperature
for theK
3 in December 27.13
28.79
29.42
25.93
26.54
27.46
decades between 1983 and 2012. Their
28.30the first
29.20 and 25.53
Thessaloniki. All the comparisons are26.77
between
the third26.17decade27.27and they are lead
study reveals that the average temp
23.50
24.16
24.13
21.92
21.69
22.34
in Athens has increased 0.63C per
conclusion
that
the
average
monthly
temperatures
are
constantly
in
winter as well as i
18.32
19.43
19.45
16.16 increased
16.85
17.35
decade over the last 3 decades or
13.88
14.64
15.14
10.91
11.58
12.41
1.3C
overall.
Andapproving
early indicators
period,
a
fact
a
warming
trend
of
the
climate
in
general.
10.13
11.18
11.64
6.60
7.47
8.30
suggest that this trend is set to

continue for the next decade.

Average Monthly and annual temperatures for Athens

Table 1:
monthlybetween
and annual
of
Greece
forAverage
the 3 decades
1983temperatures
- 2012

1983-1992, 1993-2002 and 2003-2012 decades

in Athens and Thessaloniki

So the temperatures are slowly

rising, this coupled with the fact
that The built environment of Athens
also contributes to increases in
temperatures. As you can see in
the photo the density of buildings
is very high and green areas quite
limited resulting in a poor air flow
in the Athens basin increasing urban
temperatures, making outdoor and
indoor thermal conditions worse. This
also leads to the heat island effect
where the density of buildings act as
huge thermal mass, retaining heat,

further increasing temperatures.

So what does this mean?
An obvious consequence of this
climate change is an increase in
building energy requirements, as
their cooling needs are increased.
This is especially relevant in
Athens as a high proportion of the
current buildings were built to
standards that required far lower
levels of thermal performance than
current building regulations and

their envelopes have poor thermal

properties, so their cooling demands
are very sensitive to any change in
temperature. This has resulted in
Greek households having the highest
n view of the energy
buildingsconsumption
ground floor in Europe.

The chart
below
shows
thewalls
energy
and the conduction
heat gains
through
glazing,
and roofs, the
calculations
for
a
typical
9 storey
and lights and the sensible heat gains from ventilation.
Operating
residential
building
in
Athens
city
he use of lights and equipment were assumed for the calculation of
centre. This type of building is
inhabited by 76% of the low income
population
(Sakka
al, 2012),
3 decades (1983-1992,
1993-2002
andet
2003-2012)
temperature bin
which
is a huge
percent
of Athens.
). Fig. 8 presents
the resulting
energy
requirements
of the building,
Therespectively.
figures show
total the
increase
of the
heating periods
Fig. 9a presents
same, when
cooling
demands
from
the
first
to
essed that Figs. 89 present the sensible energy requirement of the
the thirdcoefficient
decade of
as the
10.6%.
is not
ture on the performance
primaryThis
equipment
unsustainable and it is obvious that

(b)
ting and (b) cooling of the office building in Athens, using data of
1983-1992), (1993-2002), (2003-2012).

they need to find a passive way of

cooling their buildings.
This is where evaporative cooling
comes into play. The Athenian
Climate has the 2 basics needed for
evaporative cooling, water and heat.
As you can see from the chart on the
next page, Athens has a Mediterranean
climate with hot dry summers and mild
wet winters.
Summers have a mean summer temperature
range of 33 C max. and 23C min and It
receives an annual average rainfall of
360mm. To put that into perspective
Dublin receives an annual average
rainfall of 760mm, so Athens receives
roughly half the amount of rain that
Ireland does
Of course it is not as easy as
simply having water and heat. Before
implementing an evaporative cooling
system we must look at the climate
in closer detail. As we know from
earlier, evaporative cooling reduces
air temperature but also increases
the relative humidity levels. As we
can see from the chart on the next
page, the relative humidity levels
during the summer in Athens are quiet
high, in the high 40s. Human comfort
levels range between 25 and 60 percent
humidity. Athens is at the higher end
of that scale and raising them further
would not be desirable.
9

10

moisture as possible at a certain temperature, the air is saturated. At saturation, the temperature

and the dew

are the same. for
The amount
of humidity
varies according to To
the temperature
and evaporative cooling
Psychrometric charts
arepoint
available
various
elevations.
analyze
location. The warmer the air, the more moisture it is able to hold.
performance in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, one should use psychrometric charts for 5,000 ft. and
The amount of water in the air compared to the amount required for saturation is called relative
7,000 ft., respectively.
humidity. If the air contains only half the amount of moisture it can hold when saturated (at the
dew point line), the relative humidity is 50%. Another method of referring to the amount of
moisture in the air is absolute humidity. Absolute humidity is the amount of water in the air
measured in pounds of water per pound of dry air. This is the variable on the right Y-axis of the
psychrometric chart on Figure 13.
down

So this is why we useThe

theefficiency of any evaporative cooling device is directly related to its ability to evaporate water
phychrometric charts.(cool)
They atbreak
a given relative humidity. EACs with low effectiveness will cool usefully only at low
the climatic data andrelative
help reveal
humidityhow
levels, while a high efficiency unit, such as a rigid media EAC, can achieve useful
much you can reduce the temperature
cooling at higher humidity levels.
before saturating the air. So if we
were to take July as an example we
values are shown along the left border of the psychrometric chart lines, just left of the
can show how much we Enthalpy
can comfortably
heavy
curved line or saturation line. Lines of constant enthalpy (and nearly wet-bulb temperature)
reduce the temperature
before
are
the
diagonal lines that run from the upper left from that curved left border line to the bottom
making relative humidity levels
right, and end at the flat line along the bottom. These lines of constant enthalpy describe an
uncomfortable

adibatic process, or one where no heat is gained or lost (or the Btu/lb-air does not change). These
are also
nearly lines of constant wet-bulb temperature. The direct evaporative cooling process is
We know the rough average
temperature
for July is roughly 32oC
90 adiabatic cooling because it closely follows these lines of constant enthalpy on a
also or
called
degrees Fahrenheit. Lets
say we chart. The reason for this is that the heat used to evaporate the water comes from the
psychrometric
wanted to reduce the heat
temperature
already contained in the air, andFigure
that13:isPsychrometric
why the Chart
dry-bulb temperature decreases. The latent
arbitrarily by 5 degrees
Celsius
heat of
vaporization of water at 65 F is 1057 Btu/lb. Another way of saying this is one pound of
or 10 degrees Fahrenheit.
know
water, We
evaporating
in one hour, is capable of Page
providing
.09 tons of evaporative cooling. Because
19
because of the psychometric
chart
this is a Law of Nature, this cooling process is dependable and economically advantageous to use.
that we cant as the relative
humidity level would increase to 90%
and beyond our comfort levels.
As you can see the max we can reduce
the temperature by evaporative
cooling is by 2 degrees Celsius or
4 degrees Fahrenheit at which the
relative humidity is at the max
capacity of our comfort levels.
Reducing the temperature by 2oc
doesnt seem like much and would
make you question the viability of
evaporative cooling

Figure 14: Adiabatic Cooling Process

The direct evaporative cooling process is shown on a skeleton psychrometric chart in Figure 14.
When the point of intersection of the outside air's dry-bulb and wet-bulb temperature is followed up
11
and to the left toward the saturation line curve along a line of constant enthalpy, this line describes
the direct evaporative cooling process. Practically however, an evaporative cooler can't reach all

12

However evaporative cooling is a

flexible passive cooling technique.
There are two types. Direct and
Indirect and all along I have been
talking about evaporative cooling as
the direct type where the environment
is cooled directly by water
vaporisation., increasing the humidity
as the temperature decreases.

This means we can reduce

temperatures much more without
affecting the relative humidity
levels. And I propose that Athens
should try implementing this type
of evaporative cooling across the
city while also incorporating some
direct evaporative cooling methods
in places.

Indirect evaporative cooling occurs

when the environment is cooled by a
cold element (which has been cooled
by water vaporisation) through heat
exchange by means of radiation,
convection and conduction transfers.
Air moisture content remains constant
during temperature decreases.

So what indirect evaporative cooling

techniques would I implement?
Firstly I would implement roof ponds
across the city. In their simplest
form, this involves placing a pond
on top of the buildings roof. As
water evaporates from the pond,
heat is consumed. This cools the
roof, which acts as a heat sink and

absorbs heat from the interior of

the building. Since Athens has quite
a heavy rainfall during the winter
months I would suggest trying to
store this water until the summer
months when the water is needed.
The project shown here with the
deep curved roofs is in the Karoo
desert and its sophisticated roof is
reminiscent of the local Aloe Ferox
plant. This roof stores huge amounts
of water and uses it to indirectly
cool the interior of the house.

the effect is relatively small

a reduction of an indoor air
temperature of roughly 4 deg C has
been reported.
The most common building type in
Athens are large multi storey
buildings so this method alone is not
viable as it will only cool the top
floor or 2.

These ponds dont need to be ponds

as such. The roofs can simply be
sprayed with a mist which evaporates
and cools the roof. ]. Water is
typically sprayed onto roofs for
40 seconds every five minutes. While
roof spraying has some potential

13

The Hydro House is a concept home by

Rael San Fratello Architects that
relies on the cooling effects of
evapotranspiration. Like the house in
the karoo desert The roof of the home
hosts a pond but this one runs off
into the walls. There, water collects
in the fins and perforations of the
thick walls, and as breezes come
across the home, the water evaporates
and cools the exterior which in turn
cools the interior.
Of course, implementing water storage
walls across the city of Athens is
obviously not feasible but the concept
of water collecting on or in the walls
and cooling the interior indirectly
is.

14

This is what led me to the 3D-printed

ceramic Cool Brick By the firm
Emerging Objects. Held together with
mortar, the brick lattice forms a
cool, protective layer against a
wall, keeping it insulated from the
heat. Each brick absorbs water like
a sponge and is designed as a three
dimensional lattice that allows air
to pass through the wall. As air
moves through the 3D printed brick,
the water that is held in the micropores of the ceramic evaporates.
The bricks are modular and
interlocking, and can be stacked
together to make a screen.. The shape
of the brick also creates a shaded
surface on the wall to keep a large
percentage of the walls surface cool
and protected from the sun to improve
the walls performance.

As a result of this seminar I would

be interested in pursuing the use
of ceramic facades to evaporatively
cool a building and its surrounding
environment. I would like to analyse
how the ceramic is produced to make
it a porous element and how it is
formed to enable the evaporative
process to occur. I would also like
to investigate another form of
construction that may be retrofitted
to an existing building or be built as
part of a new building so that it may
be used within the existing Athenian
urban fabric.

15

Questions after Presentation

Is the Cool Brick structural?
Yes, the cool brick can be used like
a standard masonry brick that is laid
with mortar. The lattice pattern used
makes the brick structurally stable
and enables it to be used in this way.
Is the geometry of the Cool Brick
very specific for the evaporative
cooling process?
While the geometry of the brick
technically allows the evaporative
cooling process to occur by allowing
air to pass through the gaps in the
lattice pattern drawing the moisture
out of the porous ceramic, this can be
achieved using far simpler geometrical
patterns. The Sony Research and Design
Centre in Tokyo, Japan uses a simple
ceramic tubes to evaporatively cool
the building. This is shown in more
detail in the later essay.
Is it possible to print Ceramic?
No it is not possible to print ceramic
but clay can be printed which in turn
can be dried and fired to make ceramic.
Different forms and shapes of clay
can be printed using a standard
desktop 3D printer that is connected
to an extrusion system consisting of
16

plastic cartridges and air pressure.

The only customization needed is a
material extrusion head that only
requires minimal changes to existing
printers. The printed clay is then
dried and fired in a kiln to form
the ceramic product. This system
was developed by Building Bytes
a company run by architect Brian
Peters.
Is it possible to purify the
greywater within a building
sufficiently to be used outside in an
evaporative faade?
While it is technically possible to
purify greywater sufficiently to an
acceptable level to be used in an
evaporative cooling process, it is
an extremely arduous process that is
hardly worthwhile.

Essay: Passive Pond Facade

17

Introduction
From studying evaporative cooling
in my previous seminar, I became
interested in the design of an
innovative evaporative cooling
wall and applying its principles
specifically to Athens, the city of our
thesis studies. As previously shown
in the seminar, water evaporative
cooling systems exploit the latent
heat of evaporation of water to reduce
sensible heat of air, and therefore
its temperature. (Torgal et al.,
2015, P 215) Evaporative cooling
is a passive technique of cooling
that may be exploited to passively
cool not only a building but its
surrounding environment. This is
especially pertinent to Athens due
to the increasing temperatures and
increased demand on cooling which was
highlighted in the seminar.
Water evaporative cooling systems
are usually categorized as either
direct or indirect cooling. Direct
evaporative cooling uses evaporation
directly in the supply air used to
cool an environment, thus lowering
the sensible heat in the air but also
increasing the humidity content.
However, as previously shown in the
seminar, the humidity levels in Athens
are already at the limits of what is
comfortable. Therefore, the preferred
category of evaporative cooling is
18

indirect wherein evaporation is used

to cool a wall or separate space
that indirectly cools the target
environment through heat exchange,
without raising humidity levels.
Important factors in the development
and design of an indirect
evaporative cooling wall are:
what material(s) it is made from,
how easily it may be produced,
manufactured, transported and
constructed on site, along with
the ease of use of the system once
installed. It is important to
develop a solution that can easily
and cost effectively be produced and
constructed. This has resulted in an
analytical and experimental essay
that investigates the best material
qualities, production methods and
prototype developments that may
best reveal a new cost effective
evaporative cooling wall.
The challenge is to find a simple
rather than complex and intricate
solution of creating an evaporative
cooling wall or faade that not
only reduces the cooling load of
the building, but also acts as a
mitigation strategy for the urban
heat island effect by cooling the
surrounding air. The end goal is to
create a highly performative faade
that can be simply and quickly
constructed.

Materials and Material Properties

When considering a material, it was
important to choose a material that
not only allows evaporative cooling
to occur but also a material where an
existing knowledge of the material
exists and where that material can
be easily manipulated, formed and
manufactured. This naturally led to
fired clay or ceramics.
The history of humanity, of
civilizations dating back tens of
thousands of years, is inextricably
linked to the firing of clay and
transforming it (Bechthold, Kane
and King, 2015, P 12) to a building
material that suited their needs.
Ceramic is considered the first
human designed material, as opposed
to materials that were essentially
used as extracted from nature and
just shaped for specific purposes
(Bechthold, Kane and King, 2015,
P 12) This shows that there is an
inherent knowledge in ceramics which
can be utilized in creating the new
prototype evaporative cooling wall.
Clay is abundantly available across
the globe, and it primarily consists
of alumina, silica and water.
(Bechthold, Kane and King, 2015,
P 12) Clays are known as hydrous
aluminium or magnesium silicates,

which are distinguished by the

property that they lose physically
absorbed or structural water when
heated. (Hummel, 1998, P 290) Over
time a highly specialized knowledge
has been developed of these clays
that today allows for the design of
clay bodies which are blends of
different clays and additives in
response to project specific needs.
When combined with different firing
techniques that regulate temperatures
over the time, the resulting ceramic
materials are highly customizable,
with significant variations in
density, strength, thermal properties
and most importantly porosity.

Micro-scopic photograph of ceramic pores

19

Most clay bodies for architectural

ceramics are earthenware and stoneware.
These terms designate technical
expressions of the blends of clays
and additives. The type we are most
interested in is the earthenware as
the particle size in this type remains
relatively large even after firing. This
means the clay remains at a low density,
even when fired to maturity, meaning
it is naturally porous and permeable
to water, which is essential for
evaporative cooling to occur.

Complex slip cast mold

This porosity of the earthenware clay is

of particular interest in this essay as
the absorption and evaporation of water
is facilitated by it. This porosity
can be controlled through the mix of
the clay body, as well through firing
sequences and temperatures. Evaporative
cooling through this material is
not new, but modern technological
advancements have allowed the scaling up
of the process and more control over it.
Earthenware is also a clay body that
can be prepared as near-liquid casting
slip by adding deflocculants These are
typically sodium silicates used to
dispel the electrical attraction between
the clay particles, thereby keeping the
clay in a liquid, low-viscosity state
(Bechthold, Kane and King, 2015, P 19)
This is also of particular interest in
this essay as this means geometrically
complex, hollow parts that may be used
20

Resulting ceramic product from above mold.

to collect water may be cast and

produced relatively easy. This an
existing process that is used widely,
such as in the production of sinks
and toilets, and one that I hope to
exploit in the later prototype.

Case Studies
Before revealing the prototype
evaporative cooling wall, I think
it is important to highlight a few
case studies that use ceramics to
evaporatively cool buildings. These
examples have influenced the design
and logic behind the later prototype.

pores of the ceramic evaporates. The

bricks are modular and interlocking,
and can be stacked together to make a
screen. The shape of the brick also
creates a shaded surface on the wall
to keep a large percentage of the
walls surface cool and protected
from the sun to improve the walls
performance. (San Fratello and Rael,
2015)

Cool Brick
At the very end of my seminar I
presented a 3D printed ceramic brick
that utilized evaporative cooling to
reduce the temperature in a building.
This was the 3D-printed ceramic
Cool Brick by the firm Emerging
Objects. Held together with mortar,
the brick lattice forms a cool,
protective layer against a wall,
keeping it insulated from the heat.
Each brick absorbs water like a
sponge and is designed as a three
dimensional lattice that allows air
to pass through the wall. As air
moves through the 3D printed brick,
the water that is held in the micro-

Cool Brick

This brick is still to be tested on

a built project and I feel this is
down to the complex nature of its
production.

21

3D printing, while it is no longer

a new concept, is still a very
specialist and time consuming job.
Even with the latest 3D printing
technology, it takes up to 15 minutes
to print a brick, (Peters, 2015) which
still has to be subjected to the
drying and firing processes. The brick
is also confined to the dimensions of a
3D printer, and while there are some
large scale 3D printers, you would
have to question their suitability to
such a job.
It is also suggested that these bricks
are constructed like standard brick
masonry with mortar which is very
labour intensive and time consuming.
This also presents the possibility
that if the mortar is not used
correctly or with great care that it
may reduce the porosity of the wall
and therefore its evaporative and
cooling capacity.

Cool Brick
22

Bio Skin - Sony Research and

Development Center
The Sony Research and development
center in Tokyo, Japan, designed
by Nikken Sekkei, uses evaporative
cooling in its innovative bio skin
faade.
The building uses rainwater,
collected on the roof and stored
in basement storage tanks, to
evaporatively cool the building.
The rainwater is pumped up from the
storage tanks and supplied to their
bio skin faade.

Sony Research and Design Center

This faade is made up of 2 layers,

a glazed curtain wall and the bio
skin, which sits 2.22 metres off
the line of glazing. (Fortmeyer and
Linn, 2014) The bio skin consists of
a system of stainless steel rods,
wires, and brackets that form a
structural grid which holds a series
of porous ceramic tubes on the
exterior of the building.
These ceramic tubes or louvres are
made of a partial internal metal
support bar which is fixed to the
hollow ceramic tube. The tubes are
approximately 110 by 70mm and are
filled with the rain water which
evaporates through the porous ceramic
tube and cools the air around them
which in turn indirectly cools the
building.

Cermaic Tube

Close up of the bio skin facade

23

The clay body used for these tubes

was customized such that the water
permeability was 10%. (Peters, 2011)
This resulted in the faade cooling
the buildings temperature to 10 C
lower on the hottest day in summer,
while also reducing the surrounding
immediate area by 2 C. (Fortmeyer and
Linn, 2014)
While the building is obviously very
successful at using the evaporative
cooling capabilities that ceramic
possesses to cool the building and
its surrounding environment, I feel
the system was overly complex and
expensive. The specialist ceramic
tubes with internal aluminium
support bars were specially made by
a company called Toto, who normally
make toilets. These one off tubes,
combined with the huge pumping system
and storage tanks required to run the
system adds a huge cost to the project
along with high maintenance costs. The
closed tubes also make it difficult to
rectify any blockages in the system if
they do occur. While there is a lot to
be admired and learnt from the system,
I feel a simpler solution could reap
similar results.

24

Prototype - Passive Pond Facade

25

The prototype faade the passive

pond facade, has been developed by
the author through the analysis of
the evaporative cooling process, the
material qualities and production
of ceramics and through studying
existing evaporative cooling
facades.
The faade has been developed with
the goal of producing an easily
manufactured and constructed ceramic
faade that utilizes evaporative
cooling to reduce temperatures in
a building and the surrounding
environment. Another consideration
when developing the faade was the
possibility of retrofitting it to an
existing building, such as the high
rise apartment blocks in Athens as
well as new buildings.

module curved in two directions to

allow it to collect water naturally
and easily when it rained. Another
reason the module was designed
in this undulating curve linear
fashion is that if the module fills
with rainwater, the overflow can be
controlled and dropped onto the next
course or row of modules below. This
creates a series of small pools or
ponds on the faade that naturally
harvest rainwater, ready for the
evaporative cooling process.

Design
The design of the faade began with
the idea that the faade itself
would collect rainwater that would
then be used to evaporatively cool
the building. The idea of needing
large storage tanks and a huge
pumping system to make a simple
process such as evaporative cooling
work didnt seem to make the
prototype viable or cost effective.
This resulted in an undulating
curve linear design wherein the
26

Side elevation of the ceramic module

The open curve linear design was

also implemented to allow natural
ventilation. The flow of wind through
the collected ponds of rainwater is
vital for evaporative cooling to
occur. It is also important to let
the cavity behind this new faade be
ventilated to allow natural cooling
as well as evaporative cooling. This
meant the gap between the modules is
important to not only allow water
to spill down onto the next module
but also to allow wind to penetrate
through the faade and ventilate the
cavity behind.

3D model of the ceramic module

secton through the facade showing how the water collects in pools and when they overflow the water
cascades down to the next row of modules.
27

3D model showing how the facade can be

naturally ventilated to draw the moisture
through the porous ceramic modules and
promote the evaporative cooling process.
28

Production and Manufacturing

Another huge factor that was
considered when designing this
faade was how it would be produced.
As the geometry of the modules are
rather complex with curves running
in 2 directions, you would think
this naturally led to 3D printing.
However, as this process is still
quite slow and not cost effective,
a method known as slip casting is
proposed to produce the ceramic
modules.
Slip casting is a technique used
for the mass-production of ceramics
and pottery. It is usually used
for making complex or hollow shapes
by making a slurry or slip of a
clay body which is then cast in a
naturally porous plaster or plastic
mold. (Rice, 2003) The biggest
advantage of slip casting is its
versatility, first in terms of shape
and second in terms of size and
materials applicability. The slip,
which is the clay body that has been
customized to a slurry or watery
consistency is poured into the mold
which is in the negative shape of the
module. The slip is then left in the
mould for an amount of time to allow
the mixture to dry to a harder state.
This drying process is important as
the mixture typically shrinks 3%

(Rice, 2003) which makes it much

easier to remove the hardened clay
body from the mould. Once removed
the module is then put in a kiln to
be fired to the finished hard ceramic
product.

slip being poured into molds.

29

The mould designed for the ceramic

module of the passive pond faade
consists of 3 parts. The moulds were
designed in this way to make the
removal of the module as easy as
possible once the clay body has dried.
The process of slip casting the module
consists of putting the 3 moulds
together to create the negative shape
of the module, the slip is then poured
in these, it is left to dry, and then
the moulds are removed.

30

It is at this stage that the holes

are punched through the still
pliable hardened or leatherhard
clay body and when the glaze is
applied. It is proposed that a
coating of a photocatalytic titanium
oxide is applied to the module
before firing to help prevent the
growth of mould and moss on the
ceramic modules. As a result of this
galze the ceramic is white in colour
and may even have a glossy finish
depending on the desired aesthetic.

Once glazed the leatherhard clay

is then put in a kiln to be fired,
typically on a low and slow heat,
to create the finished ceramic
product. The hardened clay body is
fired on a low and slow heat as this
results in a ceramic that has quite a
porous nature. It is hoped that the
combination of a customized clay body
and firing process, that a finished
ceramic module may have a water
permeability or porosity of 10%,
similar of that to the ceramic tubes
of the Sony Research center in Tokyo.
31

32

Experimentation

Construction

It was my intention to try 3D print

these plastic molds and test to see
if I could cast the desired module
and remove it from the molds without
any damage. As I have no to clay or
expertise in creating customized
clay bodies I was hoping to cast the
modules using different consistencies
of concrete and plaster. However, due
to the 3D printer not working in the
college, I was unfortunately unable
to do so. I still hope to test print
these modules once the 3D printer is
back up and running.

It is intended that the ceramic

modules will be constructed like
a typical ventilated faade, off
the face of the building sitting
on a simple steel or aluminium
substructure. This substructure
consists of simple steel sections
that the ceramic modules are fixed
to with proprietary fixings and then
stabilized with a simple rod with
specially designed separators.

Molds shown that they fit the 3D printer and

that the software can handle their geometry.

Molds shown that they fit the 3D printer and

that the software can handle their geometry.

The rods and separators are to ensure

that the modules dont vibrate or
move too much in the wind, as this
could cause the ceramic to split,
crack or even shatter. The stainless
steel fixings are hidden due to
the tiles overlapping, creating a
seamless curvilinear elevation with
only the separators visible.

3D model reealing the

support steel and
stabilizing rods and
seperators

33

Result
This prototype passive pond faade is
still in the concept stage and the
system needs to be tested to measure how
much the faade will actually reduce
the cooling loads on a building and
reduce temperatures in the surrounding
environment.
However, I believe the system represents
an innovative hybrid solution deriving
from the combination of ventilated,
shaded and water evaporative
technologies. Not only do the modules
collect water to evaporatively cool,
they also act as a ventilated faade and
as a sun screen to protect the building
from overheating. The idea was to use
these technologies in their simplest form
to create a modular component system
that exploits the hybridization between
digital fabrication techniques and
traditional ceramic processes.
The system operates as a non - structural
membrane that, together with a steel
connective system or sub structure, is
draped over a new or existing building
to evaporatively cool the building and
the surrounding environment. I believe
the faade finds a balance between
the requirements for aesthetics and
functionality may be very useful in the
Athenian climate.
Section through the
facade
34

Elevation of facade.

35

Bibliography
Bechthold, M., Kane, A. and King, N.
(2015). Ceramic material systems.
Basel: Birkhauser.
Fortmeyer, R. and Linn, C. (2014).
Kinetic architecture. [Melbourne],
Australia: Images Publishing Group.
Hummel, R. (1998). Understanding
materials science. New York: Springer.
Martin, A. and Martin, A. (2006). The
essential guide to mold making & slip
casting. New York, NY: Lark Books.
Peters, T. (2011). Experimental green
strategies. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley.
Rice, R. (2003). Ceramic fabrication
technology. New York: Marcel Dekker.
San Fratello, V. and Rael, R.
(2015). EMERGING OBJECTS Cool
Brick. [online] Emergingobjects.
com. Available at: http://www.
emergingobjects.com/projects/coolbrick/ [Accessed 2 Nov. 2015].
Torgal, F. (2015). Biotechnologies and
biomimetics for civil engineering. New
York: Springer.

36

Torgal, F., Labrincha, J., Cabeza,

L. and Granqvist, C. (2015). Ecoefficient materials for mitigating
building cooling needs. Cambridge:
Woodhead Publishing.

Image References
All image references are for the
essay only.
Page 19: Obtained at http://www.azom.
com/article.aspx?ArticleID=2998.
Edited by author.

Pages 25 - 35: All drawings and

Images are property of the author
with the exception of Page 29 which
was obtained at http://www.data-clay.
org/projects/Bone%20Scaffolding/
index.html

Page 20: Ceramic project called Bone

Scaffolding by Del Harrow. Obtained
at http://www.data-clay.org/projects/
Bone%20Scaffolding/index.html
Page 21: Cool Brick by Emerging
Objects. Obtained at http://www.
emergingobjects.com/projects/coolbrick/
Page 22: Cool Brick by Emerging
Objects. Obtained at http://www.
emergingobjects.com/projects/coolbrick/
Page 22: Sony Research Design Centre.
Obtained from Fortmeyer, R. and Linn,
C. (2014). Kinetic architecture.
[Melbourne], Australia: Images
Publishing Group.
Page 23: Sony Research Design Centre.
Obtained from Fortmeyer, R. and Linn,
C. (2014). Kinetic architecture.
[Melbourne], Australia: Images
Publishing Group.

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