UN Sustainable Development Goals Addressed

  • Goal 3: Good Health & Wellbeing

  • Goal 9: Industry Innovation & Infrastructure

  • Goal 11: Sustainable Cities & Communities

  • Goal 13: Climate Action

2020 Global Design Challenge Finalist

This design concept was developed by participants in the Institute’s Global Design Challenge. The descriptions below are from the team’s competition entry materials.

Location: Taipei, Taiwan
Team members: Hung Yi Lai, Shin Yu Wang, Lai Hung Yi

Concept art in shades of blue showing two human figures inside a structure using a noise barrier and sunshade system
Image: Project Team / A Sensitive Wall / Copyright © - All rights reserved

Innovation Details

Increasing traffic noise and rising heat caused by climate change negatively affect the 55% of global population living in urban areas. Inspired by concave-eared torrent frogs, mimosa leaves and desert snails, this team designed a green noise barrier and sunshade system that aims to improve urban living conditions by providing a dynamic natural sound proofing system and elevation greenery to urban landscapes.

What is the problem you are trying to solve and how is it related to the united nations sustainable development goals?

We would love to create a better urban living condition. After studying the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, our team has a significant interest in dealing with urban living quality issues. With consulting with architects, real estate developers and studying recent researches, we first get a deeper understanding of urban noise issue. Urban noise caused by traffic has become more and more severe. After that, we also find in recent years, climate change has led to the unbearable high temperature issue in subtropical country. How to use vertical or horizontal blind or other design strategy to reduce heat gain also become an important issue. To combine noise barrier with building sunshade system together in a multifunction design become our principal goal. Our design focus on dealing with urban traffic noise, reducing energy consumption and improving urban ecosystem which are directly responding to UNSDG Goal 11: Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. For example, like Goal target “11.3 By 2030, enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization and capacity for participatory, integrated and sustainable human settlement planning and management in all countries.” and also “11.7 By 2030, provide universal access to safe, inclusive and accessible, green and public spaces, in particular for women and children, older persons and persons with disabilities.” are highly related to our design. With our design, buildings can improve the interior living quality, provide a better sound proofing system as well as elevation greenery to urban landscape. Along with analysis tools, we found out we can the building façade heat gain can reduce 57.7% ~ 61.3% and can reduce more than 6dB(-6dB means approximately reduce 75% energy) of Sound Pressure Level in the distance of 6.5m to the MRT rail way in New Taipei City, Taiwan.

What organisms/natural systems did you learn from and how did what you learned inform your design?

To reduce the environmental noise, we studied the concave-eared torrent frog. This kind of frogs has developed a hearing protection system to face the loud streaming and their own croak. They can modulate the sound level entering their ears by closing their normally open Eustachian tubes. That inspired us to design an automatic system that reacts to the noise. We designed a dynamic green noise barrier and we referenced the mimosa as the sensor-deformation system. In the researches of mimosa, we found that two different sensor-deformation systems are working simultaneously to face different stimulation. When receiving tactile or thermal stimulation, the expansion pressure of the tertiary pulvini (actuator) allows the mimosa to close its leaves in a short time. The receptors can also be stimulated by light, and run on a daily cycle to close the leaves at night and open again after sunrise. We put different sensor on the envelope of building to collect different environmental information. The data are used to adjust the angle of the pot units for noise and sunlight. Form, material, and color of the pot unit were inspired by the desert snail, which adapts hot and dry environment. The shell of the snail reflects 95% of solar radiation and reduces the evaporation allowing the snail to survive. The shape of the shell also provides better resistance with limited and lightweight materials. The egg-shape pot was made of fiber reinforced plastic to make it light and strong. The curved surface helps to reflect radiation and reduce evaporation. The funnel-shape bottom saves water for irrigation by draining the exceed water to the lower pots.

What does your design solution do? How does it address the problem or opportunity you selected?

To reduce the heat gain from buildings next to the elevated MRT as well as create sound proof, we use the bio mechanism we learned from the concave-eared torrent frog, mimosa and the desert snail and then convert the mechanism into our dynamic green noise barrier. The dynamic green noise barrier design has two time-cycle, one follows the sun and the noise from the traffic will trigger one. With connecting the decibel meter and sun path sensor, the device follows the sunlight to give suitable sunshade of the room and when the noise rate goes up, the dB meter will use local wifi to remote control the device back to the origin point, to give the best sound proofing effect. With rotating from 0 degree to 180 degree, our design can have nice sun shading rate change fitting into different days in the year. Through 3D modeling, we put the simulated site into the acoustic analysis software to test the Sound Pressure Level before and after the installation of our design. With the linear sound source setting to 80 dB and the distance from the MRT rail to the building set to 6.5m, we can reach 6 dB above reduction (-6dB means approximately reduce 75% energy) of the SPL. Simultaneously, the plant sound insulation wall system also reduces the direct sunlight casting area of the building shell, reducing the energy consumption of interior. At 0 degrees, the area of direct sunlight reduced by 61.3% kWh annually (from 10378.29 kWh to 4006.16 kWh/m2). At 45 degrees, 59.8% of the sunshine area reduced. At 90 degrees, 57.7% of the sunshine area reduced. Different from the other sound proofing system, our design contains green plants and multiple mechanism, which helps the living condition in urban cities.