Performative Evidence of Smart and Urban Trees - Assessing the thermal and visual impact of large scale urban shading structures via simulation

Abstract

This contribution presents specific results from a project pertaining to large scale urban shading structures. These structures were named as "smart and urban trees". Thereby, we understand artificial structures that should be implemented in urban agglomerations at places and locations, where no other green-blue infrastructures can be deployed. As such Smart and Urban Trees do not pose a competition for real trees, but a supplement whenever real trees cannot be integrated in the cityscape (e.g., due to underground installations or means of transport). Whereas the project per se did address a large number of aspects of such Smart and Urban Trees (e.g., aesthetics, construction, organizational aspects, end-user acceptance, etc.), this contribution reports on the impact of such Smart and Urban Trees on thermal (physiological equivalent temperature, indoor temperatures in adjacent buildings) and visual surroundings (impact on daylight availability in the surrounding buildings), both in the public space and in the surrounding buildings. Toward this end, a case study district / neighborhood was chosen as virtual test bed for different Smart and Urban Tree designs. It could be proven that the envisioned structures can significantly contribute to mitigation of overheating phenomena, also in comparison to real, living trees.