Articles

The H2020 PLURAL project proposes prefabricated, modular, and adaptable lightweight façade systems for rapid renovation of existing buildings, providing high-performance, cost-effective, and fast renovation solutions. This article outlines these technological innovations, setting out the characteristics of the three core PnU (Plug-and-Use) kits that have been tested in prototype form.

Are roof spaces well exploited? How do they contribute to the efficiency of buildings? This article proposes several ways of redesigning roofs to enhance Sustainability parameters such as Renewable PV production, energy savings, thermal comfort, water use reduction and leisure areas.

Within the context of the ENVISION project, different technologies have been developed aiming to harvest energy while being integrated into the façade of buildings. This paper reports their performance, focussing on solar façade collectors coupled with Heat Pumps and PV windows.

According to some simulation-based analyses carried out in specific climates, building characteristics, and urban contexts, the annual energy demand could be reduced by up to 69% if the thermal properties of opaque building envelopes can be adjusted and controlled.

Experts from the IEA SHC Task 59 and the Interreg project, ATLAS, make available a range of more than 130 energy retrofit solutions for historic buildings – via the best practice collection in the HiBERatlas and the online decision guidance of the HiBERtool.

The accurate measurement and self-assessment of the actual energy performance of new or existing, small and medium-sized buildings is the basic goal of the digital solution developed within the context of the Auto-DAN project.

The INFINITE project has developed a BIM Platform (BIM-P) which is a digital data environment and asset information management, supporting stakeholders to collaborate throughout the whole life cycle of buildings. The platform stores and shares data, and also enables data exchange with other tools for LCA and LCC evaluations.

The PLURAL project developed key technologies, called Plug-and-Use kits (‘PnU kits’), for the deep renovation of EU buildings, aiming at reaching the goal of near-zero energy buildings (NZEB). A data mining algorithm is utilised to find all minimal configuration settings of a PnU kit that practically ensures the NZEB status of the building after the configuration is installed.

The  ECF4CLIM project co-designs, tests and validates a European competence framework for the educational community to drive the transition to a sustainable and low-carbon economy.

This research aimed to inform the development of a set of tools to inspire a more inclusive design process, and to evaluate post-occupancy according to Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility (IDEA) in the built environment.