Dune is an adaptive shading pavilion designed for hot desert climates. Its modular structure offers flexible configurations, improving outdoor comfort and enhancing spatial experience during events and exhibitions.
Summary
Dune is a research-driven pavilion designed to provide adaptive shading in hot, arid environments, such as those hosting large-scale events in tropical or subtropical regions. The pavilion addresses the growing need for outdoor thermal comfort, combining modular design, kinetic elements, and interactive systems. Its canopy, composed of rigid panels with “digital hinges,” can expand or retract via computerised control, adjusting both shade intensity and spatial openness. More than a shelter, Dune serves as a contextual mediator, fostering engagement, visual interest, and multipurpose use of event spaces. It reflects new lifestyles and design paradigms responsive to climate and human behaviour.
This research focuses on the design and development of Dune, an outdoor shading pavilion conceived for exhibition and event spaces in hot desert climates. With the increasing number of international events being hosted in tropical and subtropical regions, ensuring human thermal comfort in outdoor areas has become a crucial challenge. Visitors’ physical well-being directly affects their experience, participation, and the overall success of such events.
Drawing on lessons learned from past exhibitions, there is a growing demand for flexible, multipurpose spaces that respond to changing patterns of human behaviour and technologically influenced lifestyles.
Dune responds to this demand by integrating adaptivity into its architectural and structural logic. Its design incorporates movable enclosure components, enabling the pavilion to interact with its users and environment. The shading system consists of modular, self-standing umbrellas that can be combined to create a variety of spatial configurations. These modules form a lightweight horizontal canopy composed of rigid panels that fold along digitally controlled hinges.
The transformation of the shading surfaces is computer-regulated, allowing the pavilion to expand or contract shaded areas and to modulate the spatial character, shifting between open and more intimate atmospheres. This adaptive behaviour enhances not only climatic performance but also experiential quality, promoting interaction and engagement.
Dune is more than just a shelter. It functions as a contextual mediator—stimulating visual interest, offering varying degrees of enclosure, and extending the usability of surrounding spaces both temporarily and over extended periods. It embodies a flexible, climate-responsive approach to architectural design for future global events.
SCIENTIFIC COORDINATOR
Marta D'Alessandro
PARTNERS
LEED evaluation of early design by Andrea Giglio (Research Fellow, Politecnico di Milano)
PUBLICATIONS
M. D’Alessandro, I. Paoletti, “Designing an adaptive shading pavilion for hot arid climates”, Conference paper for COST TU1403 “Adaptive Facades Network” Lucerne, November 26/27 2018.
