Future climate adaptive building shells : optimizing energy and comfort by inverse modeling

The traditional design process of building shells leads even today to substantially static systems. Building shell properties, like insulation value, thermal mass and window area, are kept constant throughout the year for the majority of buildings. As a result, buildings do not perform optimally and large energy consuming HVAC installations are used to compensate for the poor performance of the building itself. The assumption of the FACET project (Dutch acronym for: ‘Adaptive façade technology for increased comfort and lower energy use in the future’) is that buildings with climate adaptive thermal and daylight properties will have a much better energy performance while maintaining a high comfort standard. The development of climate adaptive buildings shells (CABS), based on theoretically ‘ideal’ adaptive properties, enables maximizing indoor comfort and minimizing energy use for heating, cooling, ventilation and lighting. This enables the realisation of nearly zero energy, or even energy producing buildings in the near future.