Fire Safety and Code Challenges for Mass Timber in Curtain Wall Systems
With the desire for more sustainable construction and reduced embodied energy, mass timber is being explored for building structures. For medium and …
22 results
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Reduce, Reuse, Reclad
Kintsukuroi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with powdered precious metal, is a practice of celebrating the life and history of an objec…
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Optimized Adaptive Re-Use
Contemporary building practice represents a disconnect between traditional manufacturing techniques, that favor straight runs and orthogonal geometri…
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Hybrid Timber
This case study provides an overview of building hybrid curtain wall system and future opportunities for the use of timber. It will also review the b…
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Orbit Tower
While most of high-rise buildings feature a core surrounded by a spatial frame defining the volume, one could envision a column-free plan where the p…
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Shaping Skin
The conventional modern facade is essentially flat, which creates the tendency toward visual monotony and problems for modulating daylight—both on th…
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Establishing a Life Cycle Assessment Methodology for Innovative Facade
Life cycle assessment was introduced in the 1970s as an analytical tool to quantify the environmental impact of a product, process, or service. Thoug…
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Innovative Façades for a Sustainable Architecture
Facades play a relevant role in the search for a more sustainable approach to modern architecture. The amount of embodied and operational energy can …
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Pioneering the Structural Terracotta Mullion Façade
Architects today must explore alternative enclosure materials to meet evolving energy codes and embodied carbon regulations. Terra cotta has been mos…
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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…
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Prefab Facades – from Prototype to Product?
Building envelopes are not only an immediately visible part of the building, they have also become a major factor both for cost and performance of th…
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Embodied Carbon Of Timber Unitized Curtain Wall
The building envelope is at the intersection of embodied and operational emissions. Curtain wall specifically could play an important role in reducin…
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Addressing Embodied Carbon
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the building sector is critical to limiting global temperature rise to less than 1.5⁰C. Construction and build…
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End-of-Life Challenges in Facade Design
In recent decades, there has been increased attention to reduce the operational energy performance of buildings. Stringent legislation on building en…
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Evaluating The Environmental Performance Of Stick Curtain Wall Systems
The construction industry is one of the greatest sources of pollution, where 39% of global energy-related carbon emissions are attributed to building…
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The Carbon Footprint of Aluminum Fenestration
The historical focus on reducing the carbon footprint of a building has recently shifted to include more emphasis on embodied carbon, the carbon emit…
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Towards Net Zero Enclosures
As architects and designers we understand the urgency of addressing the building sector’s role in the ongoing environmental crisis. Architecture2030 …
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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…
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Sustainable Façades
Transposing innovation from government funded research to commercially viable solutions becomes ever more important when combined with the urgent nee…
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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 …