Today, the development of new technologies to improve building envelope performances ishighly encouraged and provides a clear challenge for designers and researchers. In thiscontext several typologies of active envelopes have become very popular. The paper startswith an overview of the history and the performances of active envelopes in the context ofurban design.
The paper describes the long-term monitoring of the hygrothermal performance of the building envelope of a heritage house located in Ottawa. The house, once the residence of two of Canada's Prime Ministers, now serves as a museum. To preserve the historical artifacts within the building, the specified temperature and relative humidity for the indoor air are 21°C and 35% to 50% respectively. As the house must also be preserved, there was concern about the effect of the high indoor relative humidity (moisture) on the durability of the building structure.
This paper reports the analysis of the thermal performance of building envelopes of high-rise commercial buildings in the subtropical climate and their interactions with cooling system. Building constructions of commercial buildings in Hong Kong have been investigated and categorized. Their thermal performance and the resulting chiller load is studied with the building energy simulation tool DOE-2. lD. The characteristics of subtropical climate, coupled to high internal gains of commercial buildings, are discussed.
The paper is a srudy of the effect of air infiltration on temperarure and water vapour pressure distributions within a porous layer. A theoretical formula describing these is proposed. The paper concludes with some new recommendations to the designer.
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