Detecting trends and further development potential of contemporary façade design for workspaces

ABSTRACT

Façade design is claimed to fulfil a number of requirements in workplaces, ranging from privacy to safety and from comfort to aesthetics. For future R&D efforts in façade design, identifying the key drivers that should shape contemporary facades in office buildings is not always an easy task because of the discrepancies that can emerge between the diverse expectations from professionals and the possible conflicts that can exist in conciliating global design trends with local climate constraints. This research aims to enrich the debate on façade design developments for office buildings, by discussing the outcomes of an on-line survey distributed worldwide among professionals working in the building design sector. Outcomes of 245 responses are summarized in an interactive chart that enables to visualize the potential of some main aspects and technologies characterizing today’s office building skins. The potential is shown based on the observed level of relevance among different professional profiles or climates. While energy and comfort emerged as the aspects attaining global and interdisciplinary consensus, the features that entailed psychological or emotional reactions attracted the most diverse evaluations. Despite not being fully exhaustive, the observations arising from this study can help with identifying possible research and developments gaps in the field.

KEYWORDS:

• Building envelope
• façade design
• interactive chart
• office buildings
• perception of built environment professionals

Acknowledgements

The authors are particularly grateful to Minu Agarwal for her valuable comments and proofreading.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Luisa Pastore http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0852-3434

Marilyne Andersen http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8813-1184

Notes

1. The grand mean is the mean of the means of several subsamples. In this case, the subsamples are Architects, Academics, Engineers and Consultants for the category ‘Employment’ and Tropical, Dry, Temperature and Continental for the category ‘Climate’.

Additional information

Funding

This work was conducted at the Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) with additional support from the SECURE project funded by the CCEM (Competence Center Energy and Mobility) [grant number 591187]; and SolAce NEST project funded by EMPA (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research) [grant number 563111].