Building envelope: techniques, languages, transparencies

Abstract

The rate of technological innovation relating to materials, production processes, construction products and components is increasingly reflected in the framework of the transformations taking place for the design solutions of the building envelope. This, intended as a sensitive and selective interface with the environment, has gradually become the privileged place of research for constructive experiments aimed at optimizing performance in terms of comfort and energy saving, summarizing many of the technological and performance, functional and aesthetic issues, typical of the contemporary architecture project. It can be said that the theme of the façade design is one of the last areas that belong to the architect-designer; just like the designer of objects, the architect is called to design “the body” of the building, to define its communicative and expressive capacity, the image (Paris, 2010).