## 4 Discussion  
As a summary from the above evaluation studies, regarding the direct impact of the facade design on the UHI effect, it can be concluded that the proposed geometry showed a reduction on the reflected solar radiation at the street level and on the urban heat intensification at a microclimate level. This was more apparent, especially, close to the facade surface and through dissipating the incoming solar rays from being reflected and accumulated inside the urban canyons. The part of the reflected solar radiation on the urban surroundings that the building is responsible for was, therefore, significantly reduced. However, the direct impact on the overall building's share on the UHI effect still remained relatively small compared to the cumulative solar radiation that is caused by other sources and is not obstructed by other mitigation strategies (Figure 27). In this sense, it can be assumed that a reduction on the building's direct contribution is not as impactful as the indirect one, which concerns the building's energy performance. Figure 26: Convective heat transfer analysis simulation results for the summer situation. The indirect analysis studies and comparative evaluations provided some insights on the environmental and energy performance of the proposed design. It was concluded that during the cooling-dominated periods, the facade skin has a higher performance when functioning only as an exterior shading device, without interfering with the building's air inflow, but working as a separate exterior structure obstructing the incoming solar radiation. By doing so, the solar heat gains could be reduced and, consequently, so could the building's cooling demands by about 21%. Nevertheless, the shading impact of the proposed design did not outperform other commonly used typical exterior shading systems, but still performed almost equally well. The difference in the current design was due to the dynamic performance of the facade's passive mechanism that shifted to the multiple-cavity double facade during the winter and led to additional benefits in the reduction of the heat losses through the building construction. However, solely in relation to the UHI effect, this was a secondary function that was not directly related to the phenomenon and mitigation method, since the reduction of the cooling loads has the main and more impactful role. It could be, therefore, said that the overall energy performance of the building can, on one hand, be improved by integrating such a passive adaptive facade system, when being evaluated through an annual operation basis. On the other hand, the environmental performance, merely in relation to the reduction of the building's indirect UHI impact, was not much different to that by simply implementing standard exterior shading systems or by adopting other standard solutions (Figure 28). Figure 28: Charts summarizing the indirect impact evaluation conclusions. Figure 27: Charts summarizing the direct impact evaluation conclusions. As a conclusion from the research process and assessment methodology, it could be argued that the evaluation of the proposed facade system in the end depended, to an extent, on the comparison benchmarks and the perspective of evaluation. As seen during the initial stages of the research layout, since UHI concerns a multilayered environmental issue, the evaluation also lay on multiple levels. Some of these observations can be summarized below and are illustrated in the diagrams in Figure 29:  
* If the system is evaluated as a standalone solution and only compared to the existing building situation before the retrofit, then the impact on the UHI effect is significant, more visible on the indirect one, but also contributing positively to the direct one. * If the comparison lies only on the direct impact, it has a better effect compared to both the existing facade and other shading devices, since the judgement lies on the materiality and reflectivity degree of the building's geometry.