The Ecologies of the Building Envelope

The Ecologies of the Building Envelope
Author: Alejandro Zaera-Polo
Publisher: Actar D, Inc.
Total Pages: 498
Release: 2021-05-11
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 163840948X

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The Ecologies of the Envelope theorizes the building envelope as a literal embodiment of the social, political, technological, and economic contingencies which have become embedded within it over the last century, analyzing the historical lineages, heroes and villains that helped define the complex material ecologies we see within the envelope today. While the façade is one of the most thoroughly theorized elements of architecture, it is also one of the most questioned since the end of the 19th century. Within the discipline of architecture, the traditional understanding of the façade focuses primarily on semiotic and compositional operations (such as proportional laws and linguistic codes), which are deployed on the building's surface. In contrast to this, our material and environmental theory of the envelope proposes that the exponential development of building technologies since the mid-19th century, coupled with new techniques of management and regulation, have diminished the compositional and ornamental capacities of the envelope in favor of material, quantitative, and technical performances. Rather than producing a stylistic analysis of the façade, we investigate the historical lineages of the performances, components, assembly types, and material entanglements that constitute the contemporary building envelope.

The Ecologies of the Envelope

The Ecologies of the Envelope
Author: Alejandro Zaera-Polo
Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2018
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9781350050341

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In The Ecologies of the Envelope, award-winning architect and renowned theorist Alejandro Zaera-Polo provides a new material and environmental theory of the façade. Bridging the gap between architectural technology, history and theory, this is a work that provides a cutting-edge overview of building envelope innovations as well as a provocative theoretical argument – in which the contemporary façade is revealed to be a complex embodiment of the social, political, technological, and economic contingencies of the 20th and 21st centuries. The Ecologies of the Envelope will appeal not only to theorists and architectural historians, but will also stimulate new ways of conceptualizing building envelope design, inspiring students and professional architectural designers alike.

Nearly Zero Energy Buildings and Proliferation of Microorganisms

Nearly Zero Energy Buildings and Proliferation of Microorganisms
Author: Elisa Di Giuseppe
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 99
Release: 2013-10-22
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 331902356X

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This book provides a concise review of the thermo-physical phenomena which regulate heat and moisture transportation in Nearly Zero Energy Buildings envelopes, and their relationship with the growth of biological organisms. It describes the main microorganisms proliferating on contemporary building elements and within buildings. It also states the consequences of biological growth on durability, aesthetics and human health; and provides the main methods for the analytical and experimental evaluation of proliferation. Finally, through the review of recent developments, remedial actions to counter the biological phenomenon are examined, and an outline is provided for future innovations in a field not yet widely investigated.

Architecture and Systems Ecology

Architecture and Systems Ecology
Author: William W. Braham
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2015-08-11
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1317540778

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Modern buildings are both wasteful machines that can be made more efficient and instruments of the massive, metropolitan system engendered by the power of high-quality fuels. A comprehensive method of environmental design must reconcile the techniques of efficient building design with the radical urban and economic reorganization that we face. Over the coming century, we will be challenged to return to the renewable resource base of the eighteenth-century city with the knowledge, technologies, and expectations of the twenty-first-century metropolis. This book explores the architectural implications of systems ecology, which extends the principles of thermodynamics from the nineteenth-century focus on more efficient machinery to the contemporary concern with the resilient self-organization of ecosystems. Written with enough technical material to explain the methods, it does not include in-text equations or calculations, relying instead on the energy system diagrams to convey the argument. Architecture and Systems Ecology has minimal technical jargon and an emphasis on intelligible design conclusions, making it suitable for architecture students and professionals who are engaged with the fundamental issues faced by sustainable design. The energy systems language provides a holistic context for the many kinds of performance already evaluated in architecture—from energy use to material selection and even the choice of building style. It establishes the foundation for environmental principles of design that embrace the full complexity of our current situation. Architecture succeeds best when it helps shape, accommodate, and represent new ways of living together.

Building Envelope

Building Envelope
Author: Randall Stout
Publisher: National Council of Teachers of English
Total Pages: 144
Release: 2004
Genre: Curtain walls
ISBN: 9780941575454

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Advanced Building Envelope Components

Advanced Building Envelope Components
Author: Francesca Stazi
Publisher: Butterworth-Heinemann
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2019-06-01
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0128169222

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Advanced Building Envelope Components: Comparative Experiments focuses on the latest research in innovative materials, systems and components, also providing a detailed technical explanation on what this breakthrough means for building exteriors and sustainability. Topics include a discussion of transparent envelope components, including intelligent kinetic skins, such as low-e coatings, high vs. low silver content in glass, solar control coatings, such as silver vs. niobium vs. tin, and more. In addition, opaque envelope components are also presented, including opaque dynamic facades, clay lining vs. plasterboard and nano clayed foams. Includes real case studies that explore, in detail, the behavior of different envelopes Presents laboratory tests on existing insulation (if any, through samples extracted on-site) to quantify actual performances Provides the tools and methods for comparing, selecting and testing materials and components for designing effective building envelopes Covers both transparent and opaque envelope components, as well as opaque dynamic facades

Postfoundational Approaches to Qualitative Inquiry

Postfoundational Approaches to Qualitative Inquiry
Author: Lisa A. Mazzei
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2023-09-29
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1000932117

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Postfoundational Approaches to Qualitative Inquiry is an edited collection that aims to move beyond a critique and deconstruction of method in order to present an engagement with various postfoundational frameworks and approaches that produce new concepts and enactments. What makes this book innovative is the singular focus on postfoundational paradigms, borrowed from the humanities and sciences, that are enveloped in what is referred to as the ontological turn, the new empiricisms, and the new materialisms. Postfoundational inquiry is conceived by the editors as emergent, relational, responsive, involuntary, and inventive. While the editors name the facets of these contingent approaches and explain how they work, they do so not in order to fix a new method, but to spur new connectives. In this collection, authors take up a range of postfoundational theories such as poststructuralism, posthumanism, postcolonialism, feminist new materialism, speculative/ new empiricism, agential realism, immanent ontologies, and affect theory. Provoked by a series of reorienting questions, chapters in the book offer enactments as a way of unfurling what is unthought, not yet, and becoming. The chapters are organized according to four Openings: Atmospheres, Affects, and Hauntings; Archives, Worldings, and Sketchings; Escaping Tradition, Beginning Elsewhere, and the Politics of Doing Otherwise; Pre-personal Agencies and Thought Taking Flight. This book can be used as a standalone text in advanced qualitative inquiry courses, or as a supplementary text in courses that examine the use of theory in research.

Deep Skin Architecture

Deep Skin Architecture
Author: Timo Carl
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 185
Release: 2019-04-25
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 3658263334

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Timo Carl presents alternatives to curtain wall facades and other flat boundaries creating autonomous spaces. He investigates facade typologies with multiple material layers to strategize the relationship between buildings and their environment. By revisiting Le Corbusier ́s seminal brise soleil an alternative reading of the modern project emerges: one that is not based on classical compositional rules, but instead on the dynamic relationships with environmental forces. Finally, an exciting series of project-based investigations sets out innovative ways in which novel deep skins combine energy-conscious performance with the poetics of architecture.

Design Ecologies

Design Ecologies
Author: Lisa Tilder
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2012-03-20
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1568989547

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Contemporary architects are under increasing pressure to offer a sustainable future. But with all the focus on green building there has been little investigation into the meaningful connections between architectural design, ecological systems, and environmentalism. A new generation of architects, landscape architects, designers, and engineers aims to recalibrate what humans do in the world according to how the world works as a biophysical system. Design in this sense is a larger concept having to do as much with politics and ethics as with aesthetics and technology. This recasting of the green movement for the twenty-first century transforms design into a positive agent balancing societal values with environmental needs. Design Ecologies is a ground-breaking collection of never-before-published essays and case studies by today's most innovative designers and critics. Their design strategies—social, material, and biological—run the gamut from the intuitive to the highly technological. One essay likens window-unit air conditioners in New York City to weeds in order to spearhead the development of potential design solutions. Latz + Partner's Landscape Park integrates vegetation and industry in an urban park built amongst the monumental ruins of a former steelworks in Duisburg Nord, Germany. The engineering firm Arup presents its thirty-three-square-mile masterplan for Dongtan Eco City, an energy-independent city that China hopes will house half a million people by 2050. An essay by designer Bruce Mau leads off a stellar list of emerging designers, including Jane Amidon, Blaine Brownell, David Gissen, Gross.Max, Robert Sumrell and Kazys Varnelis, Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake, R&Sie(n), Studio 804, and WORKac.

Design and Construction of High-Performance Homes

Design and Construction of High-Performance Homes
Author: Franca Trubiano
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2013-03-05
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1135874913

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Both professionals and students are increasingly committed to achieving high-performance metrics in the design, construction and operation of residential buildings. This book responds to this demand by offering a comprehensive guide which features: architectural innovations in building skin technologies which make lighter more transparent buildings high performing; energy-free architectural design principles and advances in building-integrated photovoltaics; essential engineering principles, controls and approaches to simulation for achieving net zero; the advantages of integrated design in residential construction and the challenges and opportunities it engenders; detailed case studies of innovative homes which have incorporated low-energy design solutions, new materials, alternative building assemblies, digital fabrication, integrated engineering systems and operational controls. Divided into four parts, the book discusses the requisite AEC (Architecture, Engineering and Construction) knowledge needed when building a high-performance home. It also communicates this information across four case studies, which provide the reader with a thorough overview of all aspects to be considered in the design and construction of sustainable homes. With contributions from experts in the field, the book provides a well-rounded and multi-faceted approach. This book is essential reading for students and professionals in design, architecture, engineering (civil, mechanical and electrical), construction and energy management.