From hygrothermal adaptation of endemic plants to meteorosensitive biomimetic architecture: case of Mediterranean biodiversity hotspot in Northeastern Algeria

This research consists in diagnosing the hygrothermal imbalance problem inside tourism buildings located at the edge of the Mediterranean Sea. In particular, we study the case of Ben M’Hidi tourism development area in Skikda coastline in Algeria. The southern room of "Royal Tulip" hotel was chosen as object of this study in order to investigate its internal hygrothermal behavior. Our study uses the problem-based approach for generating biomimetic architectural concepts that help to develop a meteorosensitive room’s envelope depending on hygrothermic local conditions. Our proposed biomimetic design was inspired by the hygro-adaptive mechanism of the so-called endemic plant "Silene Amphorina". The focus of this paper is to compare the hygrothermal efficiency of the biomimetic envelope versus the real room’s envelope. For this purpose, hygrothermal simulations were performed using the WUFI Plus(®) software. Our results show that the biomimetic hygrothermal behavior is more adapted than the real one. It has regulated the ambient temperature and it has reduced the internal humidity rate by around 20% in summer, 23% in mid-season and 35% in winter, which will enhance the internal hygrothermal comfort and ensuring the sustainability of the tourism building. In future works, we will be able to propose meteorosensitive envelope responses based on these results.