123 results

  • Virtual World Congress? Bah, humbug!

    I’ve heard a little of this from some people and it bugs me! We are going to have the best World Congress event in the history of mankind! The prospect of taking FTI’s signature World Congress event to a digital platform is nothing but opportunity for the Institute. Let me tell you why

  • Building Buildings, Community, and Wellbeing

    This month, our content is focused on how buildings impact people and their well-being. How does their shape, look, and design impact how we function? How are our daily lives, our culture, and our society influenced by the built environment around us?

  • HydroSKIN

    Building envelopes cover a considerable part of the urban exterior surfaces, and to therefore have a significant leverage effect on the climate resil…

  • Curb Your Carbon, Knave!

    A question for architects and building industry: Can our cities be part of the solution to the challenges facing humanity, or are they intrinsically and inevitably a big part of the problem? To move beyond the latter demands nothing less than a fundamental shift in the way we think about buildings.

  • PowerSKIN Conference

    The next PowerSKIN Conference will be held virtually in Munich on April 9th. The focus of the 2021 conference deals with the question of whether simplicity and robustness are in contradiction to good performance or whether they even complement each other: Simplicity vs. Performance?

  • Skin Deep: Health, Wellness, and the Facade System

    Here we are, a full year after the initial COVID-19 surge rocked the United States. It’s hard to believe we’ve been living through the pandemic for a full year at this point; and yet it also feels like it’s been multiple years. We are beginning to see glimmers of hope on the horizon as more people..

  • Carbon-Neutral High-Rise Envelope Nexus

    The pathway to carbon-neutrality, as urged during the COP 21 in Paris, and the repeated goal for resilient buildings and urban habitats, winds right …

  • 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…

  • APT Seattle Conference Symposium 2023: Aging Composite Materials and Assemblies

    Aging modern heritage buildings and structures face complex repair and reinvestment challenges. Manufactured composite materials and multi-material assemblies often cannot be cost-effectively repaired or replaced in kind.

  • Facade Tectonics Forum: LA

    Presentations of outstanding projects in the LA area. More details will be announced soon. Make sure you're signed up to receive event updates. The event is free but registration is required. See you there!

  • Adaptive Facades featured image

    Adaptive Facades

    Facade engineering aims at appropriately balancing the demands imposed by the context and the capabilities inherent to the materials, the geometries …

  • Structural Skin: Integrating Structure and Cladding

    From gothic masonry to the sculptural building facades of today, exposed structural surfaces are often the most defining element of architecture. Increasingly, however, designers sit at a nexus of these aesthetic considerations and performance-driven design.

  • Shaping Skin

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

  • Structuring Skin

    Curtain wall is the prevailing type of enclosure on modern buildings because of its economy, its independence from structure that allows flexibility …

  • The Double Skin Facade featured image

    The Double Skin Facade

    The largest source of air pollution in North America is the atmospheric boundary layer of a city caused by its urban canyons with pollutants produced…

  • Differentiated Building Skin featured image

    Differentiated Building Skin

    The Los Angeles Stadium’s doubly curved skin is composed of over 35,000 unique triangular panels covering 296,502 square feet of surface area. The pa…

  • The Performative Double-Skin

    Double-Skin Facades (DSF) are well-known to boost the thermal performance of a façade: they can provide extra insulation in the wintertime and lower …