When You Think of “Skin”…What’s the First Thing You Think Of?

Have you ever compared building skin to human skin? Well, with new developments like nanotechnology, smart materials and ubiquitous computing the time is ripe to revisit the inner-workings of the human body’s largest organ. After all, there is much to learn by taking a closer look at what lies beneath its surface — particularly as it relates to architecture.

What do you typically think of when you think of “building skin”? Does it primarily function to keep the exterior outside and the interior inside? Or do you use it to bring the outside in within certain parts like windows, ducts and doors? Perhaps you have a more avant-garde way of working with “skin” — using it as part of your architectural language that allows your building to communicate with both its interior and exterior at the same time.

Wherever you may be in your ideas and way of designing building skin, I’m sure that the human skin can help to reinforce and spark new ideas for your architectural designs. You might be surprised to discover that there are many similarities between these two “skins”, and in essence, they are both there to protect and to communicate.

Can Human Skin Inspire Your Designs?

For starters, I want to show you this simple video that clearly shows how the human skin operates physiologically. Now is a good time to watch this sneak peek:

Notice any similarities between what human skin needs to do and what your building skin needs to do? Well, there are many similarities, particularly as building skin evolves into the future by continuing to integrate sensing technologies into its “surface”.

With such technological advancements (and with ongoing movements like sustainability and biomimicry) building skins will take on renewed ways to “breath” where its systems and surfaces will be capable of things like self-assembly, self-repair and self-regulation.

Of course, these are also some of the characteristics of human skin, and to take matters further, there are many more potential similarities when you consider the pieces and parts to make all of this work — for example, did you see the sensory receptors in the latter skin video? Beneath those layers are sensory receptors which basically allow the skin, and thus the body, to extract the most pertinent and helpful information from the exterior.

Just to get You Thinking…

Really, as the architect, it is you who embeds “rules” into your building skin, and it is your building skin that will hold, process, actuate and communicate to the rest of your building’s “body”. Just as human skin maintains a systematic structure, so too does your building skin — in real-time.
Thus, you should rethink the potential of what your building “skin” can become. As it is indeed a barrier, it is simultaneously a flexible filter. Just think, your skin can become a “bridge” that pulls from the exterior to feed the inside, and visa versa.

Upon finding this right balance and optimization, architectural skin can be quite beautiful.

The following is a simple, abstraction and interpretation of a “breathing” architectural skin. What ideas does this give you? And how can you use building skin to improve your architectural environments for your occupant?

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