Given the global challenges arising from climate change, relevant, promising methods to expedite the energy transition are essential. The integration of solar cooling technologies into façades represents an important option. Potential benefits of applying solar cooling technologies include conserving primary and conventional electricity sources, lowering peak energy demand to achieve cost savings, and offering environmental benefits. This study aimed to support the design team and stakeholders involved at the design and development stages with a framework that supports developing solar cooling integrated façades. This study adopted a participatory research methodology to identify, outline, and validate key decisions, information, and stakeholders supporting product design and development. The key study findings revealed that the integration of solar cooling technologies into façades should be considered at the conception stage, where the client, climate designer, building physicists, building service consultants, and architects were identified as key participants who should be involved in the decision-making process. The most critical information identified for supporting design decisions includes technology costs, performance and efficiency, cooling demand, and construction characteristics of the thermal envelope.

In recent years, several studies have assessed the influence of automated façades on energy savings, IEQ, and occupant satisfaction. However, discrepancies exist between the expected advantages of automated façades predicted in research and the actual benefits observed in real-world tests. To assess how automated façade operation enhances building performance, in particular within office building contexts, this study reviews and analyzes current evidence on the influence of automated façades. In this review, 91 studies were identified presenting evidence of their performance. A total of 34 studies investigated performance in laboratory settings, 23 in real office buildings, and 34 in simulations. Only 13 laboratory studies and 17 real office building studies included human participants. Visual and thermal quality were the main indoor environmental domains investigated, with limited exploration of others. Existing studies show large variability in contextual factors (e.g., type of shading and control) or experimental designs (e.g., different benchmark scenarios), hindering the comparison of results. Consistent evidence shows the potential of automated façades for energy savings, particularly in lighting and cooling demands, which outperform manual control systems. Automated controls are more effective in reducing excessive daylight and glare, while evidence of the impact on thermal and air quality remains limited. Regarding occupant satisfaction, evidence is unclear since, in some cases, occupants prefer manually controlled façades and, in others, automated ones. Further research is suggested on human-centered studies in real office buildings to capture occupant behavior and preferences while exploring solutions that dynamically identify and integrate factors affecting occupant interaction with buildings.

Integrating solar cooling technologies into building façades can play a crucial role in reducing reliance on conventional cooling systems. However, incorporating various aspects at the early stages of a project can be challenging for designers due to the diverse types of information, steps, and decisions required. This study aimed to develop strategies for design teams to facilitate the early-stage design and evaluation of building façades integrating solar cooling technologies. The strategies were developed using a research-through-design methodology, considering the Spanish context and a proposed evaluation set-up to assess techno-economic feasibility. The development of strategies involved mapping the design and evaluation of solar cooling integrated façades by identifying and relating key processes, inputs, outputs, design decisions, and tools within key design stages. Consequently, a systematic design and evaluation process was carried out, including the identification and assessment of potential integration scenarios for solar electrically driven and thermally driven technologies based on relevant techno-economic criteria. The findings indicate that water-cooled vapor-compression chillers (VCC), combined with photovoltaic (PV) panels as an electrically driven solution, were the most relevant option for the selected case. Additionally, the developed strategies revealed that early-stage decisions significantly impact later processes, as they involve a greater number of steps, required information, and design choices. These strategies serve as guidelines to support designers in adopting a systematic design approach, helping to manage the complexities associated with processing diverse technical and economic information. Providing such structured methodologies to professionals with limited experience in solar cooling technologies is crucial for enabling their broader application.

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.

The present research proposes a framework to design and evaluate façade products integrating solar cooling technologies (SCTs), applied in an office building in a Southern Europe region. The building comprises various types of façade elements, such as opaque walls, glazed curtain walls, overhangs, and balconies. Key regulatory measures were implemented considering national energy saving regulations. The results represent annual energy consumption (kWh/m2/year) and the average daily cooling demand in Summer Design Week (kWh/day) of the simulated base model. This energy consumption lies within range of a previously simulated generic office and the average annual energy consumption of office blocks. Potential scenarios for integrating SCTs were outlined and evaluated using the solar fraction (SF) as an indication to measure the potential performance of the system based on nominal efficiencies, providing an initial reference of its ability to meet cooling demands, an essential step in early design stages. Scenarios per configuration related to double-effect chillers with evacuated tubes collectors and water-cooled vapor compression chiller and photovoltaic (PV) panels were the only one having an SF value of 1 or more, meaning that they can be able to handle the required cooling demand. Future steps should consider a second level of technical evaluation of scenarios having SF values of 1 or more, which should involve aspects related to how to physically integrate the technology, considering compactness and space usability and also maintenance requirements, among other relevant criteria.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.