Adaptive facades are a promising choice to achieve comfortable low-energy buildings. Their effective performance is highly dependent on the local boundary conditions of each application and on the way the dynamic properties are controlled. The evaluation of whole building performance through building performance simulation can be useful to understand the potential of different Adaptive opaque facades (AOF) in a specific context. This paper evaluates through dynamic simulations promising design solutions of AOF for a residential building use in six different climates. It quantifies the total delivered thermal energy of 15 typologies of AOFs which consist of alternative adaptation strategies: (i) variation of solar absorptance of the cladding, (ii) variation of the convective heat transfer of air cavities and (iii) adaptive insulation strategies. For the first time, it also quantifies the performance of AOF which combine more than one adaptation strategy. The results show that the variation of the heat transfer by means of Adaptive Insulation components has the most significant impact on the reduction of the thermal energy use. The variation of the solar absorptance has also a significant positive impact when reducing heating consumption, but only if this adaptation strategy is actively controlled and combined with Adaptive Insulation components.

Adaptive Opaque Facades (AOF) is an innovative concept with potential to achieve low carbon energy buildings. However, so far AOF are not integrated in the construction industry. One remarkable issue that designers have when dealing with alternative low-carbon technologies, such as AOF, is the absence of previous built experiences and the lack of specialised technical knowledge. Design roadmaps can be convenient solutions to guide pioneer low carbon technology applications. This work presents a roadmap to assist the performance-based early-stage design process of Adaptive Opaque Facades. Previous research developed new approaches and tools to assist on the construction definition of AOF, so that their adaptive thermal performance was considered when specific design decisions needed to be made. The roadmap presented in this paper organises the implementation sequence of each methodological approach and tools in dierent design stages, which aims to provide a holistic design approach for AOF. The usability of the roadmap was validated in a workshop called ¿Performance-based Design and Assessment of Adaptive Facades¿ with master students representing the target group of this roadmap. Even though these students had never heard about AOF before, they could successfully design, define the early-stage characteristics of an AOF and quantify the thermal performance of their AOF designs. The roadmap was proven to be a useful support, which might make the implementation of AOF more appr

Mainstream design approaches for low-energy buildings make use of highly-insulated building envelopes. However, if facades are always blocking energy exchange, the climatic resources surrounding the built environment might remain untapped or issues like overheating could arise. By reducing energy demand or improving indoor comfort, adaptive opaque facades are considered a promising sustainable alternative. The usual approach for designing adaptive facades relies on detailed simulations of specific facade components. Such technology-oriented approaches tend to be incompatible with the early-stage design process and do rarely make a conscious analysis of the potential climatic resources, which could result in sub-optimal facade adaptation strategies. This paper presents a new methodological approach called Dynamic Climate Analysis (DCA) and shows that it is possible to narrow down the preferable adaptive opaque facade responses at early design stages by extracting relevant transient information from weather files. Users only define the location, geometry and placement of the facade. It was concluded that DCA represents a broadly useful early-stage design decision support because of its ability to estimate the proportion of preferred adaptive thermal behaviours without proposing defined technological solutions. Therefore, DCA is an effective approach to test the potential application of upcoming responsive technologies in specific built contexts.

Post-occupancy evaluation is a valuable method of generating information on the performance of adaptive building façades in relation to users. This evaluation technique involves both procedural methods, such as soft-landing, and empirical measuring, such as environmental monitoring or self-reporting techniques including surveys. Several studies have been carried out in recent decades to identify the most appropriate methods for occupant comfort, well-being, productivity, satisfaction, and health assessments in workplaces. Post-occupancy evaluation of adaptive façades can, however, be a challenging task and information on this topic is still scarce and fragmented. The main contribution of this paper is to bring together and classify the post-occupancy evaluation methods for adaptive façades and suggest a framework for their holistic evaluation. Specific recommendations for improving current standards and guidelines are outlined here to enhance occupant satisfaction and environmental conditions in workplaces for future design projects. Finally, we discuss various ongoing trends and research requirements in this field.

Today¿s society needs to face challenging targets relating to environment and energy efficiency, and therefore the development of efficient façade systems is essential. Innovative concepts such as Adaptive Building Façades might play a role in the near future, as their dynamic behaviour could optimise the performance of a building. For their successful development, a balance between sophistication and benefit is necessary and the implementation of Smart and Multifunctional Materials in building envelopes could be the key, as they have the ability to repeatedly and reversibly change some of their functions, features, or behaviours over time in response to environmental conditions. However, these materials were predominantly developed for use in other fields, and there is a lack of specific technical information to evaluate their usefulness in façade engineering. The aim of this paper is to collect the critical information about promising responsive materials for use in the design of Adaptive Façades, in order to help designers and technicians in decision-making processes and to scope possible future applications in façades. Investigated materials were analysed from the Building Science standpoint; their weaknesses and threats in the built environment were highlighted, and their technical feasibility was examined through the study of their availability in the current market.

Adaptive or Intelligent façades are those that can interact with users and dynamically vary their performance or properties (controlling thermal or solar energy, air flow and/or daylight) in response to changing external conditions and indoor demands. Consequently, adaptive façades could help to ensure occupant comfort, health, well-being and satisfaction, while allowing resource-efficient building operation. However, effective adaptive façade solutions that provide an optimal balance between user comfort, satisfaction and energy efficiency cannot be achieved without knowledge of the multidisciplinary complexity of the user-façade interaction. The main objective of this paper is to preliminary review and analyse the existing literature on user interaction with intelligent buildings, especially with façades, and to propose a conceptual framework to capture the multi-disciplinary and multi-domain complexity of user interaction with adaptive façades. The interaction between adaptive façades and occupants is then modelled as a closed loop of information and action exchange. This paper concludes indicating which are the future research needs to be addressed in order to define what is a satisfactory interaction strategy between occupants and façades.

Adaptive façades have emerged strongly in extreme climate countries, as their behaviour contributes to optimize the energy efficiency of buildings and the well-being of the occupants. Its development in temperate climates could contribute to the achievement of European environmental objectives for 2020 and 2050. These will only be obtained if occupants accept and know how to use buildings, hence the need for in-use assessments of buildings, especially of the most innovative ones. In the literature review, very few postoccupational evaluations or assessments of Adaptive Façades have been found, even less in temperate climates, where the façade must adapt to varied conditions at a short time scale. This article shows the Case Study of an office building, the Media-TIC, located in Barcelona (Spain), which has a Mediterranean Climate with mild winters and warm summers. Media-TIC has two different Adaptive Facades facing southeast and southwest, and the innovative technology consists on inflatable sheets and cushions made of ETFE (Ethylene Tetrafluor Ethylene). The study was conducted with a small sample of occupants distributed in different floors and orientations of the building. The behaviour of the Adaptive Façades, the occupants¿ acceptance in respect to the innovative system and the possibilities for its improvement were analysed.