State of the Art in Building Façades

This chapter presents a portfolio of building materials suitable for facades. It describes the relationship between material type, building element, facade, and the entire building structure. Traditional facades based on static components, as well as adaptive concepts able to interact with changing environmental conditions, are briefly described and illustrated with pictures. Climatic design principles, biomimicry, and bioinspiration in architecture are introduced with the purpose of inspiring future developments

Outlining a new collaborative business model as a result of the green Building Information Modelling impact in the AEC supply chain

BIM (Building Information Modelling) technological push has enabled to integrate the design/construction outcomes of 3D-CAD along the product/service AEC (Architecture, Engineering and Construction) SC (supply chain) through an intelligent DMS (Data Management System) based on standard and interoperable data formats. The proposed end-to-end approach overcomes a typical AEC gap, enables the operationalisation of the sustainable/green building LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) and puts together new collaborative relationships with the owner, among SC stakeholders and with new forms of BIM procurement. The outlined collaborative business model is based on the Quality Control and Assurance framework and provides conceptual consistency to the reintroduction of the owner concerns/satisfaction in the SC, as well as enables consistent and accountable relationships between (smart)materials procurement and building specification. An expert’s focus group carried out a preliminary check of the model’s interest/applicability, resulting in recommendations for its further detailing and for propositions development into a systematic enquiring process.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Building\u2019s Operational vs Embodied Energy: needs and barriers for a more reliable environmental impact balance

To comply with EU directives, which require new buildings to be nZEB by 2021 (2010/31/EC) and all buildings to be nZEB by 2050 (2018/844/EC), the construction industry has mainly focused on the containment of energy consumption during use, but scientific literature highlights that techniques employed to achieve higher operational energy efficiency lead to an increase of embodied energy, embodied carbon and other environmental impacts, especially those related to the manufacturing of building materials. The more stringent energy standards have thus reduced the impacts of the building operational phase, raising those relating to materials and components which are required to allow the buildings achieving these benefits. Several evidences of this trend are provided by applying the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA): although that method is not currently addressed by the EPBD, the key role that the embedded impacts play on the building environmental balance is confirmed. Though a precise calculation of embedded impacts is difficult to perform, due to the many factors involved, the estimation of their share compared to the operating impacts is crucial to determine an effective building energy and environmental balance. Moving toward this target, the Sustainable Building Rating Systems (SBRS) are progressively integrating LCA-based criteria within their protocols. This should provide a simplified and standardized approach thus helping their application in building sector, as preconized by the literature. However, several discrepancies emerge in both method\u2019s application and interpretation of the results among the different SBRSs in use worldwide