An interdisciplinary review of the wind-powered building skin

There is great potential in utilizing wind energy in urban environments. Densely distributed buildings leave little room for traditional wind turbines to perform. While building facades provide large areas for utilizing wind, limited studies can be found about harvesting wind energy using building skins. Using Citespace software to filter relevant studies in the last ten years, this paper aims to systematically review the current research condition of wind-powered building skin (WPBS) from an interdisciplinary perspective, including the relevant prototypes, micro wind energy harvesting devices, and proper wind energy utilizing building designs. This review found that 1) studies of WPBS prototypes were rare and the most relevant studies investigated building integrated wind turbines (BIWT) rather than WPBS as a system; 2) as the core component of WPBS, 43.0 % of existing studies of micro wind energy harvesting devices was about the windmill-based wind harvesters, followed by triboelectric (24.0 %), piezoelectric wind (17.5 %), electromagnetic (9.5 %), and electrostatic (6.0 %) harvesters; 3) 37.5 % of existing studies of building design with good wind energy potentials focused on the investigation on rooftop areas, followed by building openings (25 %), building corners (16.7 %), space in between buildings (12.5 %), and upper parts of high-rise buildings (8.3 %). The novelty of this research is to systematically review WPBS from an interdisciplinary perspective to draw researchers' attention from different fields to work together to promote the development of this technology. •Proposing the new concept of wind-powered building skin.•Relevant wind-powered building skin prototypes are limited.•Micro wind energy harvesters are the key to wind-powered building skin.•Proper facade design can help increase wind power collection.