291 results

  • Facing Density

    The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs projects a world population growth of over three billion over our current, nearly eight …

  • Bringing an Icon Into the Future: Willis Tower featured image

    Bringing an Icon Into the Future: Willis Tower

    Few buildings are as iconic as Willis Tower. Generations of Chicagoans have a collective memory of this building playing a role in their entire lives…

  • The Craft of Building Enclosures

    This paper will provide case studies of two high-performance building envelopes in the San Francisco Bay Area where the fabrication of bespoke façade…

  • Advances in Laminated Glass Engineering

    The stability of monolithic glass fins is reasonably well defined; as an elastic material it behaves in a similar manner to other elastic materials s…

  • Contextualizing Glass and Carbon Impacts

    Climate change goals will require significant improvements in the way buildings are constructed and operated. Building reuse can combat climate chang…

  • The Carapace Pavilion featured image

    The Carapace Pavilion

    The Carapace Pavilion is a university-based, design-build, full-scale custom prototype for a possible replacement of the standard precast concrete to…

  • Parametric Louver System

    The Parametric Louver System is a customized tool that expedites several design iterations while embedding multiple design parameters. The ambition o…

  • Novel Thermal Break Solution featured image

    Novel Thermal Break Solution

    Thermal-break-blanket technology is a novel and high-performance thermal break solution for aluminum curtain walls. The thermal-break-blanket is inst…

  • Inside the Box

    The trend towards modular and unitized facades continues to grow in popularity due largely in part to the efficiencies gained in terms of cost and ti…

  • More Than a Facade featured image

    More Than a Facade

    In 2014, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) approved the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute (PCI) as an accredited ANSI Standards D…

  • Kinetic Solar Envelope featured image

    Kinetic Solar Envelope

    Kinetic responsive systems are gaining attention in architectural applications, to reduce the building’s energy consumption and environmental impact,…

  • Form Follows Well-Being

    Recent planning recognizes a growing demand for buildings that provide higher levels of occupant well-being. Often, well-being in buildings is reduce…

  • The Myth of Simplicity featured image

    The Myth of Simplicity

    There were good why reasons early US Modernism first evolved in California– wide open sites with no constraints (physical or zoning), and effectively…

  • Glass Spandrels and Shadow Boxes featured image

    Glass Spandrels and Shadow Boxes

    Glass spandrels are a common design strategy utilized to opacify floor levels in building facades. These opaque glass assemblies are integrated into …

  • Advances in Effective Thickness featured image

    Advances in Effective Thickness

    Effective thickness is a simplified method for the structural evaluation of laminated glass section properties. The method consists of defining the e…

  • Condensation Study of Windows featured image

    Condensation Study of Windows

    This paper discusses a simulation study of different window systems, where heat transfer simulations were performed to investigate thermal performanc…

  • Stainless Steel 101 featured image

    Stainless Steel 101

    This paper presents a summary of the industry advances beyond T304 and T316 austenitic stainless steels. The greater availability of precipitation ha…

  • When Facades Kill featured image

    When Facades Kill

    The tragic fire of June 14, 2017 at the Grenfell Tower in London, England has brought to a very public global forum issues related to the impact of f…

  • Unitized Curtain Wall featured image

    Unitized Curtain Wall

    Unitized curtain wall has become ubiquitous in contemporary facade design and construction due to advantages associated with speed of erection, lower…