233 results

  • Fire Safety in High Rise Exterior Facades featured image

    Fire Safety in High Rise Exterior Facades

    One of the most complex yet least understood areas where fire can spread is at the perimeter of a building. Fire can not only spread from floor-to-fl…

  • Challenges of Tall Iconic Building Retrofit featured image

    Challenges of Tall Iconic Building Retrofit

    Change happens, for better or for worse, to all living and physical matter. In order to thrive and achieve longevity, we constantly need to adapt to …

  • Influence of Facade Materials on the Acoustic Environment featured image

    Influence of Facade Materials on the Acoustic Environment

    Urban noise pollution is a major environmental health problem. International organizations are making efforts to prevent health damage due to high le…

  • Thinking About Facades featured image

    Thinking About Facades

    There have been three decades of liberating developments in the application of descriptive geometry and freeform design methods, as well as the abili…

  • ETFE Membrane Envelope Strategies featured image

    ETFE Membrane Envelope Strategies

    Airflow within the cavity of double-skin facades is a key component of adaptive building envelopes which change thermophysical properties to meet cha…

  • Facade Resilience Evaluation Framework featured image

    Facade Resilience Evaluation Framework

    Resiliency is the capacity of a building (or building component in the case of the facade) to support building functionalities during extreme events …

  • 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…

  • Shade and Spectacle featured image

    Shade and Spectacle

    This paper will look at the different facades of the Elysian Fields apartment building designed by Warren Techentin Architecture [WTARCH] and complet…

  • Window in Wall: Back to the Future featured image

    Window in Wall: Back to the Future

    In order to get to a carbon neutral building stock – which is e.g. required by the EU Carbon roadmap by 2050 – our efforts need to be smart and holis…

  • Connections – Tolerance, Adjustability, Geometric Accuracy featured image

    Connections – Tolerance, Adjustability, Geometric Accuracy

    Connections, those transitions between systems and materials, are critically important when the surfaces are curved or complex. Well-designed connect…

  • Nested Density featured image

    Nested Density

    Projecting imagery onto building facades is not only becoming a marketing necessity for successful urban spectacles but is also altering social urban…

  • 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…

  • The First Triple Certified Facade featured image

    The First Triple Certified Facade

    Johnson Controls (JCI), a leading provider of intelligent building technology solicited the design of a 35,000sm headquarters for its Asia-Pacific Re…

  • Renewing Two Saarinen Icons featured image

    Renewing Two Saarinen Icons

    Kresge Auditorium and the MIT Chapel, designed by Eero Saarinen and built in 1955, are both world renowned works of architecture and powerful symbols…

  • Invert Auto-Shading featured image

    Invert Auto-Shading

    Allowing sufficient amount of natural light while avoiding excessive sunlight penetration is often hard to achieve with static facade systems due to …

  • Doubling Mies featured image

    Doubling Mies

    Mies van der Rohe’s concurrently designed projects for Commonwealth Promenade Apartments (1953-1956) and the Esplanade Apartments (1953-1957), saw th…

  • Shaping Skin featured image

    Shaping Skin

    The conventional modern facade is essentially flat, which creates the tendency toward visual monotony and problems for modulating daylight—both on th…

  • Sustainable Façades

    Transposing innovation from government funded research to commercially viable solutions becomes ever more important when combined with the urgent nee…