The European building stock demands urgent renovation due to the age of the buildings, their expected lifetime, and their excessive energy consumption, which accounts for more than a third of the EU’s total emissions. However, the complexities involved, such as time, costs, and structural modifications, often discourage clients, tenants, and occupants from undergoing a building renovation process. Textile membranes, despite their long history in various architectural applications, have only been employed in façades in the last decades. Their intrinsic properties, such as lightness and flexibility, together with rapid assembly and low maintenance make these materials particularly suitable for façade retrofitting. Therefore, they are worth exploring as a way to promote the development of lightweight and easy-to-assemble façade products that could help overcome the current limitations of building retrofitting efforts. This paper aims to establish relationships between textile membranes and potential building retrofit applications. To this end, this study builds on the categorization of traditional façade retrofit strategies and proposes a new classification for textile façade retrofit products. The methodology includes a comprehensive literature review of textile properties and characteristics, along with a thorough assessment through case studies, of membrane use in façade applications. A sequential investigation leads to the main outcome of identifying three clear pathways for the development of new textile-based façade products for building retrofit.

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Solar cooling integrated façades (SCIFs) have the potential to reduce primary energy consumption for space cooling. Identifying key enabling factors in the context of technical and product (T&P), financial (F), as well as process and stakeholder (P&S) related aspects represent an important step providing relevant knowledge for implementing solutions supporting the widespread application. This study aims to identify main factors enabling the widespread integration of SCTs in façades from the point of view of various professionals. An interview guide was designed to tackle main aspects to be considered for supporting the widespread application. Different criteria were considered to select the interviewees during the data collection, such as participants who worked on the application or façade integration of solar/SCTs in buildings. The findings obtained from a total of 23 interviews revealed that the most frequently mentioned factors are product performance and efficiency, facilitating the delivery of product information to architects and clients, aesthetical acceptability, multidisciplinary teamwork, and ability to customize products. The factors were mapped in the context of façade design and construction processes to establish a matrix for implementing solutions in product development. Majority of the factors were linked to the design phase according interviewees’ perceptions. The results also indicated that newly built office buildings have been perceived to be one of the most relevant types of buildings to be considered for such technologies. The identified enabling factors and prospects of future applications of solar cooling integrated facades (SCIFs) contribute to expand the boundaries of knowledge in the field of building product development.@en

The application of façade products integrating solar cooling technologies tends to be one of the promising options to be considered for challenges related to the increase in global demand for cooling in the built environment. Accordingly, the technological innovation of such products represent an essential task to be taken into account for meeting the future cooling demand in buildings. However, selecting the right technology and tackling technical and product-related aspects in the context of solar cooling can be challenging, since each technology is different from one another in terms of their working principles. Furthermore, developing such building products can be a complex endeavour, due to the involvement of various components. This paper aims to propose a conceptual approach for designing and developing façade products integrating solar cooling technologies. Proposing this approach required establishing a matrix of key attributes and criteria affecting technological selection through referring to identified key perceived enabling factors by expert interviews in an earlier stage of the study. The outcomes of this study outlined various attributes, such as product performance and efficiency as well as compactness and space usability, that can be used in product development of solar thermally and electrically driven systems, in order to ensure to support the widespread application.@en

The global attention to solar cooling systems has increased during the last years as a result of the expected growth in the world cooling demand. Such systems encompass the use of renewable energy as the main driver for mitigating indoor temperatures. Currently, some of these technologies are mature enough for their commercial application in buildings. Building facades present high potential for the integration of such technologies. This is because of their direct effect on the indoor comfort of buildings, and also their ability to provide external surfaces exposed to the sun radiation. However, there are different challenges affecting the widespread application of solar cooling integrated façades. This paper aims to identify and categorize these challenges through conducting a comprehensive literature review. A literature review was conducted on scientific papers published in conference proceeding and scientific journals, through considering two databases, namely Scopus and Web of Science. Then the study suggested three main potential dimensions that should be tackled and integrated when supporting the widespread application of the façade integration a particular solar cooling technology. The dimensions include technical, financial, as well as process and stakeholder related aspects. Such proposed dimensions represent an initial step for identifying important aspects to be considered for supporting the product widespread application in the built environment.@en

Façades cover a significant amount of surfaces in cities and are in constant interaction with the acoustic environment. Noise pollution is one of the most concerning burdens for public health and wellbeing; however, façade acoustic performance is generally not considered in outdoor spaces, in contrast to indoor spaces. This study presents a systematic literature review examining 40 peer-reviewed papers regarding the effects of façades on the urban acoustic environment and the soundscape. Façades affect sound pressure levels and reverberation time in urban spaces and can affect people’s perception of the acoustic environment. The effects are classified into three groups: Effects of façades on the urban acoustic environment, including sound-reflecting, sound-absorbing and sound-producing effects; Effects of façades on the urban soundscape, including auditory and non-auditory effects; Effects of the context on the acoustic environment around façades, including boundary effects and atmospheric effects. @en

The implementation of Nearly Zero-Energy Buildings (NZEB) renovation packages in Europe needs to be accelerated to meet the decarbonisation goals. To achieve this level of performance, building renovation strategies should shift towards industrialised solutions that incorporate a multitude of passive and active components, increasing the complexity and cost of the execution. Moreover, it requires the involvement of different stakeholders of the building supply chain, resulting in additional difficulties in communication and coordination. To address this challenge, this study aims at mapping the renovation process and at addressing the respective bottlenecks. The objective is to identify the type of information that the stakeholders require during the different renovation phases and provide a framework to structure the workflow between all actors. By structuring the information along the renovation process phases, the different stakeholders can identify when the information can be provided and how the different types of information link to each other.@en