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    		Essay:

    Future of building envelope

    by structural.de

    In all times, the facade of an building was an important issue. The more money the client could afford, the more the building had to show of this wealth. Today, modern buildings need especially expensive materials to show wealth and technology. After the time of fine natural stones, now glass and stainless steel seems to become the sign of richness. The SONY Center in Berlin is a good example: The cost for facade equals the cost for the basic concrete structure, i.e. floor slabs, columns and lift cores. No wonder, when stainless steel elements are used widely, and the rest of the fassade consists of glass.

    But, the building envelope now has to solve a lot of more functions for the building: Insulation, heat protection, light inside the building, visible contact between inside and outside. Some functions seem contradictive. Especially with glass facades, high tech is requred to unite insulation and sun-protective tasks. The solution is the use of gas-filled, metal-coated insulation glass.

    The tendency ist now to integrate even more physical and technical parts, especially the climatisation, into the building envelope: Instead of installing miles of tubes and tin-plate channels inside, most climatisation could now be located directly below the windows beein part of the outer "wall". Fresh air can be hoovered, preheated by the exhaust air from inside, and local energy of the sund can be used to reduce overall cost. The vital element of all that is the cheap embedded computer , that rules all the vents and valves according to sund and temperature. Since most of the transported air now has very short was, no "sick building syndrome" can occur. Also the way of installation of heating systems will change: Now traditionally centered around the building core, those pipes and ducts can be installed inside the "outer walls" . The big advatage is, that the system can easyly be changed without affecting the inner building use. Most heating and climate systems have a life cycle of about 15 to 25 years, but buildings mostly between 50 up to 120 years. the unevitable change of thoses systems can now be done with the change of envelope (facade) elements from outside, reducing disturbance and construction time. Side effect: The fassade elements have a same short life cycle, mostly by weathering or beein out of fashion. Changing both together allows to revive the building with a minimum cost and effort. And: More inner building volume, free from ducts, vents and pipes, is usable.

    The near future will bring us lots of more possibilities: Lets wait for 5 years, and the liquid cristal stuff that is now an expensive part of our beloved notebook computer will then be a bargain; available like alluminium kitchen foil. Glass producers will put that stuff at each window glass, allowing to react electronically as sunshade, courtain or advertisement screen. Also the roof of shopping areas , fabrication sheds and libraries can be made from "intelligent glass", so the limit between window, wall and roof will vapour. The building envelope will be ubiqiutous and chameleon-like, changing over the day and with the seasons. This allows the design of a total new class of buildings, with new design rules. Partition, space, proportion, size, stile, material appearance - almost all of the architect¡äs vocabulary will get a new dimension. Also well- suited prefabrication of those high-tech envelope elements will revolutionize industrial building and design. Altogether a huge challenge for the poeple who deal with this - the architects and engineers.

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    More info of this article can be found on the web at: This link was checked on Dec. 2006http://www.structural.de/text/envelope-e.html




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