Envoltória Rígida: a permanência da identidade face ás mudanças climática

Abstract

This research addresses a problem that emerges at the intersection of climate change and the preservation of buildings with significant symbolic value. Despite the recognized interest in safeguarding such structures, many of them are situated within rapidly transforming urban landscapes, whose reconfiguration is intensified by climate change and rising temperatures. In this context, an architectural element is identified as both symbolically salient and crucial to thermal performance: the building envelope.

This element points to the emergence of a relatively unexplored concept, termed the “rigid envelope,” which expresses the phenomenon resulting from the coexistence of forces of change and permanence within the building. Accordingly, a set of artifacts is proposed to enable the representation of envelope rigidity within a BIM (Building Information Modeling) environment to support decision-making, considering how design modifications affect both the building’s image and its thermal performance.

The methodological approach adopted was Design Science Research (DSR), structured into the following stages: (1) Problem awareness: in-depth examination of key research concepts (thermal performance, General Systems Theory, information representation, among others); (2) Suggestion: formulation of preliminary propositions for the artifacts; (3) Development: consolidation of the artifacts (definition of the envelope concept and its formal representation through an indicator; development of a workflow associating this concept with other relevant constructs; protocols for applying the indicator and workflow; and instantiation of the artifacts in the case study of the Pavilhão Reitor Martins Filho); (4) Evaluation: validation of the artifacts based on performance metrics; and (5) Conclusion: dissemination of results.

The research achieved its objective of developing a set of artifacts to represent envelope rigidity and yielded outcomes that addressed the challenge of managing the abstraction of perceptual image data, as well as enabling the production of decision-support representations applicable to diverse design contexts.