Rethinking Building Skins: Transformative Technologies and Research Trajectories provides a comprehensive collection of the most relevant and forward-looking research in the field of façade design and construction today, with a focus on both product and process innovation. The book brings together the expertise, creativity, and critical thinking of more than fifty global innovators from both academia and industry, to guide the reader in translating research into practice. It identifies new opportunities for the construction sector to respond to present challenges, towards a more sustainable, efficient, connected, and safe future. - Introduces the reader to the role of façades with respect to the main challenges ahead - Provides an overview of the major façade technological advancements throughout history and identifies prospective research trajectories - Includes interviews with key industry players from different backgrounds and expertise - Showcases a comprehensive range of leading research topics in the field, organised by product and process innovation - Covers major innovations across the value chain including façade design, fabrication, construction, operation and maintenance, and end-of-life - Contributes towards the definition of an international research agenda and identifies emerging market opportunities for the façade industry

This open access book explores the strategic importance and advantages of adopting multidisciplinary and multiscalar approaches of inquiry and intervention with respect to the built environment, based on principles of sustainability and circular economy strategies. A series of key challenges are considered in depth from a multidisciplinary perspective, spanning engineering, architecture, and regional and urban economics. These challenges include strategies to relaunch socioeconomic development through regenerative processes, the regeneration of urban spaces from the perspective of resilience, the development and deployment of innovative products and processes in the construction sector in order to comply more fully with the principles of sustainability and circularity, and the development of multiscale approaches to enhance the performance of both the existing building stock and new buildings. The book offers a rich selection of conceptual, empirical, methodological, technical, and case study/project-based research. It will be of value for all who have an interest in regeneration of the built environment from a circular economy perspective.

The external facades of a building are more than a protective mantle, or an intelligent skin regulating temperature and light, they also determine its very appearance. By unusual choices of materials and the use of complex technology, facades have become increasingly significant in recent years. External surfaces are being perceived as an integral part of the building and are therefore being designed as such. This volume focuses on the wide-ranging aspects of facade design, from the selection and use of materials to the advanced technical possibilities now open to the architect. A wide array of carefully selected international examples show the theory in the practice. All plans, details, and large scale sections of the facades have been researched with the high degree of competence typical of the editorial staff from the review Detail. Expert authors provide the essential information needed to plan and design facades and elucidate on the latest developments in technology and materials.

Design modelling has benefited from computation but in most projects to date there is still a strong division between computational design and simulation leading up to construction and the completed building that is cut off from the computational design modelling. The Design Modelling Symposium Berlin 2013 would like to challenge the participants to reflect on the possibility of computational systems that bridge design phase and occupancy of buildings. This rethinking of the designed artifact beyond its physical has had profound effects on other industries already. How does it affect architecture and engineering? At the scale of engineering and building systems new perspectives may open up by engaging built form as a continuous prototype, which can track and respond during use and serve as a real world implementation of its design model. This has been tried many times from intelligent façades to smart homes and networked grids but much of it was only technology driven and not approached from a more holistic design perspective.

The Ecologies of the Building Envelope theorizes the building envelope as a literal embodiment of the social, political, technological, and economic contingencies which have become embedded within it over the last century, analyzing the historical lineages, heroes and villains that helped define the complex material ecologies we see within the envelope today. While the façade is one of the most thoroughly theorized elements of architecture, it is also one of the most questioned since the end of the 19th century. Within the discipline of architecture, the traditional understanding of the façade focuses primarily on semiotic and compositional operations (such as proportional laws and linguistic codes), which are deployed on the building's surface. In contrast to this, our material and environmental theory of the envelope proposes that the exponential development of building technologies since the mid-19th century, coupled with new techniques of management and regulation, have diminished the compositional and ornamental capacities of the envelope in favor of material, quantitative, and technical performances. Rather than producing a stylistic analysis of the façade, we investigate the historical lineages of the performances, components, assembly types, and material entanglements that constitute the contemporary building envelope.

In the 21st century, architects and engineers are being challenged to produce work that is concurrently sustainable and resilient. Buildings need to mitigate their impact on climate change by minimising their carbon footprint, while also countering the challenging new weather conditions. Globally, severe storms, extreme droughts and rising sea levels are becoming an increasingly reoccurring feature. To respond, a design process is required that seeks to integrate resiliency by building in the capacity to absorb the impacts of these disruptive events and adapt over time to further changes, while simultaneously being part of the solution to the problem itself. This issue of AD is guest-edited by the interdisciplinary team at Stevens Institute of Technology who developed the winning entry for the 2015 US Department of Energy Solar Decathlon competition, the SU+RE House. While particular focus is paid to this student designed and built prototype home, the publication also provides a broader discussion of the value of design-build as a model for tackling the issue of integrating sustainability and resilience, and what changes are required across education, policy, practice and industry for widespread implementation. Contributors include: Bronwyn Barry, Michael Bruno, Alex Carpenter, Adam Cohen, Ann Holtzman, Ken Levenson, Brady Peters, Terri Peters, Karin Stieldorf, Alex Washburn, Claire Weisz, and Graham Wright. Featured architects: 3XN/GXN, FXFOWLE Architects, Local Office Landscape Architecture (LOLA), Lateral Office, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), Snohetta, Structures Design Build, and WXY Studio.