The Elegance of Vertical Farming: Architectural Design of Building Integrated Plant Factories with Artificial Lighting

With phenomena such as population growth and urbanisation, expanding cities no longer derive their food supply from their hinterlands but rely on the global food trade which includes vast greenhouse and open-field agriculture. Given the limited availability of land, water and nutrients together with the uncertainty of a changing climate, the...

TE integrated facade: Design of an integrated facade for a typical office building in the semi-arid climate of Tehran using thermoelectric technology powered by PV panels for space heating and cooling

Building industry consumes around 50% of the world’s electricity consumption and space heating and cooling plays an important role in ozone depletion and global warming potential. Solar cooling technologies promise more sustainable approaches with reliance on solar energy as a renewable energy source. Thermoelectric technology is a promising...

Smart Energy Buildings: Development of a photovoltaic thermal system configuration with additional envelope-integration into a multi-family building

The problem that needs to be resolved is the fact that there is too little knowledge about the energetically optimal application of photovoltaic thermal collectors (PVT) in an energy system configuration as well as its integration in a building envelope. A solution for this problem could eventually entail an optimisation in the use and storage...