41 results

  • Slipping through the Cracks featured image

    Slipping through the Cracks

    We construct building enclosures to keep the elements out, but sometimes air and water infiltrate the building envelope, causing several problems for…

  • Execution Ways featured image

    Execution Ways

    Business Insider has described San Francisco’s Chase Arena as setting “a new standard for a sports arena in the US”, and “the state-of-the-art arena …

  • Design Considerations and the Complex Facade featured image

    Design Considerations and the Complex Facade

    The design of complex, high-performance facades involves balancing attention towards principles of material selection, thermal and moisture protectio…

  • 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 …

  • In Factory Commissioning

    Factory inspection visits are vital, yet they unfortunately have a habit of being overlooked. The factory inspection process during the Building Enve…

  • Kinetic Solar Envelope

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

  • HydroSKIN

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

  • The Butterfly featured image

    The Butterfly

    Providing a unique and integral cladding/envelope solution suited for high-rise buildings has been an inherent challenge for this building typology s…

  • Form as Energy

    All too often, high-performance building envelopes are considered in terms of new materials and technologies that push specific systems to improve en…

  • Xilinx Case Study featured image

    Xilinx Case Study

    The transformation of a dark and inhumane 1970s tilt-up concrete office building into a high performance, light-filled modern workplace was enabled b…

  • Air Spaces Changed Everything featured image

    Air Spaces Changed Everything

    This abstract proposes that architectural facade design over the last 60 years has convulsed in light of two disruptions: air spaces which create ven…

  • 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 …

  • Exo-Skins

    Cost-effective, sustainable, self-actuating, thermally-responsive, bio-composite exo-skins that act like shields or cloaks for existing buildings cou…

  • Balancing Visual Comfort and Energy Efficiency

    With increasing interest in wellness and human-centric design in workplaces, the design of building enclosures is predicated on optimizing competing …

  • Designing with Photovoltaics featured image

    Designing with Photovoltaics

    Photovoltaics (PV) have been utilized in buildings for decades, especially in Europe where legislative support has largely driven the market. With ne…

  • Autonomous or Appropriate featured image

    Autonomous or Appropriate

    This paper examines two profoundly different design approaches: one, herein called ‘autonomous’, where the building’s design is governed by internal …

  • 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…

  • Terracotta 1912 to 2018 featured image

    Terracotta 1912 to 2018

    Center Three is a 100-year-old, one million square-foot building in Long Island City, New York that was constructed over the course of one year. It w…

  • Orbit Tower featured image

    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…