Simulating nonlinear nano-to-micro scaled material properties and effects at the architectural scale

The problem of simulating atypical and nonlinear nano-to-micro scaled material properties at the architectural scale is untenable given the complexity of calculating such data using current rendering and simulation platforms. Though existing rendering engines enable the simulation of material optical properties such as angle dependence, transparency, translucency, and color, the unique behavior and scale of many nonlinear nano materials' angular dependence and wavelength filtering properties requires the development of new tooling methods and workflows. eSkin-a project to develop passively responsive building façade systems, frames the larger foundation for this paper, which is narrowly focused upon our catalogue of tools where desired optical properties of nano & micro array structures are first simulated in order to extract angle and wavelength dependent quantitative optical data. Once calculated, these optical properties are then redeployed at the architectural scale utilizing custom written software platforms and algorithms.