Integration of Design and Technologies for Responsive Buildings

Buildings are a man-made environment built innature. The relation between the indoorenvironment and outdoor nature has becomestrained since much energy was consumed inorder to create a comfortable and safe indoorclimate in the 20th century.It seems that as the indoor climate becomessafer and more comfortable, the more pollutedthe outdoor environment becomes, resulting in akind of structural dilemma in our society. Inother words, the separation of indoor andoutdoor space was expedited as air conditioningtechnology became prevalent. The energysavingpressure is accelerating this tendency andis helping destroy the responsive relationbetween man and nature.It is necessary for building design to be aimed ata sustainable society to solve this dilemma andto recover the responsive contacts between manand nature. Natural energy resources such as thesun and wind are well-known as clean andrenewable energy sources and can be expectedto replace conventional fossil energy resourcesin the future.