26 results

  • 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…

  • Facade Mock-ups featured image

    Facade Mock-ups

    Curtain walls and window walls are typically specified to meet a variety of different performance and testing criteria, some of which can be quite st…

  • 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…

  • A Burning Question Revisited featured image

    A Burning Question Revisited

    In recent decades the use of unitized glazing systems has become increasingly common especially for high-rise construction. The opaque panels in unit…

  • Infinite Panel System featured image

    Infinite Panel System

    Today, building facades are expected to do much more than merely provide shelter, which is driving the need for higher performing envelope solutions.…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Prefab Facades – from Prototype to Product? featured image

    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…

  • Digital Enablement for Manufacturing featured image

    Digital Enablement for Manufacturing

    Architectural design freedom achieved on high-end projects currently costs over $1,000/sq. Ft. Building materials have long been relegated to plane s…

  • Reinforced Polymer Concrete Screen Walls featured image

    Reinforced Polymer Concrete Screen Walls

    Apertures is a six-story, commercial building in the Roma Norte neighborhood of Mexico City–a neighborhood severely impacted by the 1985 and 2017 ear…

  • Thermal Analysis of Complex Glazing featured image

    Thermal Analysis of Complex Glazing

    The use of bidirectional scattering distribution function incorporated in a transient systems simulation program, allows engineers to accurately dete…

  • 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 …

  • Climate-Oriented Prefabricated Building Envelopes

    Facades developed in response to climactic factors increase performance and human comfort while reducing energy loads. A single building envelope wil…

  • Separating Direct From Diffuse featured image

    Separating Direct From Diffuse

    An Enclosure-Integrated, Daylighting, Tracking Solar Collector (EIDTSC) has been developed for market which integrates into a building’s fenestration…

  • Ceramic Precast Composite Panels featured image

    Ceramic Precast Composite Panels

    An innovative lightweight ceramic precast composite panel is introduced in this paper that offers the unique benefits of prefabricated off-site const…

  • 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 …

  • Academic Wood Tower Choreography featured image

    Academic Wood Tower Choreography

    With an ever-growing interest in mid- and high-rise mass timber construction, this paper highlights the insights and lessons learned across global ma…

  • Kinematic Structural Glass featured image

    Kinematic Structural Glass

    The structural glass storefront facade at 111 Main Street in Salt Lake City lends itself as a case study in accommodating large building displacement…

  • Façade Systems and Embodied Carbon featured image

    Façade Systems and Embodied Carbon

    Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a methodology used to quantify the impact of building construction supply chains on the environment in terms of measur…