An energy-saving office façade adaptable to outside weather conditions in the Netherlands

In order to reduce the environmental load (energy and materials) of buildings, a study was undertaken to develop and assess solutions for a dynamic, weather and daytime adaptable office façade. The following steps have been taken:

• The total environmental load (energy and materials) of a 1990 reference façade and some variants were determined.
• After analyzing the thermal behavior of the façades, theoretically possible solutions to save energy were developed and calculated. These are the possibilities to change the admittance of solar radiation, to change heat insulation value, and to enable thermal heat storage (both night cooling in summer and storage of solar radiation in winter). The energy consumption by application of these theoretical solutions was calculated.
• Based on the most promising energy-saving principles, several design concepts with more common and available materials were developed and their total environmental costs were determined. The technical feasibility of the concept was also taken into account.
• The most favorable option was worked out in detailed drawings and the final improvement in environmental impact The final façade design realizes a heating energy reduction of 66%, which comes down to a reduction in environmental costs of the energy consumption of 51%, also taking cooling energy into account. Including the use of materials, the final design has an environmental index of 183, indicating an improvement in total environmental impact by a factor 1.83