Innovative Products and Technologies for the Building Skins

  • New materials for the building skin
  • Smart materials for intelligent building envelopes
  • Architectural membranes for high-performance building skins
  • Thermal performance of Phase Change Materials for the building skin
  • Eco-materials for a sustainable building skin
  • Glass for advanced building envelopes
  • Integrating photovoltaics and solar thermal technologies into façades
  • Solar Shading systems for enhanced daylight control
  • New forms of concrete for the building envelope

Advanced Building Skin Design

  • Design methods for sustainable, high-performance building façades
  • Double skin and cavity façades
  • Responsive and adaptive building skins 
  • Kinetic architecture
  • Biomimicry / Biomimetics
  • Intelligent sensing, control and optimization
  • High-tech lightweight building envelopes
  • Green walls and roofs
  • Sustainable design with Building Information Modeling (BIM)
  • Parametric design and digital fabrication
  • Additive manufacturing and 3D print of the building envelope

Performance of the Building Envelope

  • Retrofitting the building envelope
  • Models, tools and simulations for sustainable buildings
  • Tools and models to optimize daylight performance
  • Building design optimization / Building energy performance simulation
  • Optimal insulation levels for roofs and façades
  • Systems performance and benefits of new construction materials
  • Cost engineering and life cycle cost analysis
  • Building commissioning
  • Building certification: LEED, Passivhaus, Minergie and other certification systems
  • Natural ventilation and thermal behavior of the building envelope

Policies, Finance, Business Models

  • Policies to overcome market barriers / Challenges to policy implementation
  • Incentives: moving beyond niche markets / Market strategies for sustainable buildings
  • Commercialization: How to get sustainable building products onto the market
  • Mandatory policies and community empowerment
  • Efficiency improvement programs for existing buildings
  • Financing and new business models of building refurbishment
  • Economic evaluation of building retrofits / Cost optimization of façade renovation
  • Building ownership and energy consumption
  • Urban development strategies for eco-cities / Applying sustainable urban-scale strategies at building level