Materials in the built environment play a major role in operational energy consumption and structural optimization as they are defined by boundary conditions. These materials functions sets the operational performance requirements for building component interfaces as an integrated façade system. Addington and Schodek (2005) identify ‘smart materials’ as systems possessing ‘embedded technological functions’ that involve specific environmental responses, operating either through internal physical property changes or through external energy exchanges (Velikov and Thün, 2013). Furthermore, they define the characteristics of smart materials as: ‘immediacy’ (real-time response), ‘transient’ (responsive to more than one environmental state), ‘self-actuation’ (internal intelligence), ‘selectivity’ (a response is discrete and predictable) and ‘directness’ (a response is local to the activating events) (Addington and Schodek, 2005).