Floss

Floss (FLexible Orientation Shading System) is a research project initiated to investigate the contradictory solar conditions that occur at the façade of a building. The façade, as an instigator of the interior environment, negotiates the conflicting desire to block solar heat gain while admitting daylight as deep into the building as possible. Blocking solar heat gain suggest reducing apertures and heavy thermal mass to reduce the introduction of heat into the building, but that would reduce natural daylight and require artificial lighting along with its increase in internal heat gain. Therefore, the challenge is how to make any façade equivalent to a north façade in terms of solar heat gain while maximizing apertures for daylight penetration. FLOSS is an adaptive shading louver system that responds to the continually varying position of the sun to obstruct the heat from direct light and yet reflect desirable indirect light into the interior.

Design team Open Source Architecture (C. Ahrens, E. Neuman, A. Sprecher)
Computation Chandler Ahrens