Executive Design of the Façade Systems: Typologies and Technologies of the Advanced Building Envelopes

The study, developed inside the experimental laboratory Material Balance Research within the Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering—ABC Department at the Politecnico di Milano, examines the advanced façade systems according to the constitutive and typological characters, as well as the functional and applicative requirements such as the expressive, constructive and interactive criteria toward the environmental, perceptive and energy conditions.
The work involves to examine the typological and technological constitution of the principal advanced façade systems in the contemporary design and experimental scenario, proposing itself as a knowledge and operational tool currently lacking in the technical literature of the sector at an international level. The work considers the field of advanced façade systems in a scientific way, constituting a support for the study and the executive design. Compared to the pre-existing literature on envelope systems, the work investigates in detail, in an analytical form, the constitution of the components on a typological and geometrical, functional and constructive level, on the basis of the documents and knowledges acquired from the essential contemporary production and construction references. At the same time, the work is configured in manual form as a reference for understanding and application with respect to traditional and complex façade systems.