Examination arrangement

Course content

The course Advanced and Sustainable Building Envelopes aims at providing an insight into the functions, properties, requirements, innovations and opportunities of materials and technologies of advanced building envelopes towards sustainable constructions.

Miscellaneous basic principles of traditional building envelopes will be treated as needed as a necessary background for the transition towards new materials and technologies in the coming advanced and sustainable building envelopes. A special focus will be on materials and technologies enabling a green shift of the built environment towards more energy-efficient, energy-producing, climate robust, climate responsive and environmental-friendly building envelopes, e.g. including life cycle assessment and circular economy in facade designs.

Furthermore, critical aspects such as climate exposure and durability, accelerated climate ageing of building materials and solutions in the laboratory, and possible robustness evaluations, will be addressed.

The main objectives of this course are:

1. Reviewing the conventional functions and properties of building envelopes with respect to building physics principles, building technology, climate resilience and boundary conditions, thermal and visual comfort, active and passive strategies, and structural and fire safety issues.
2. Presenting the advancements of the new research tendencies and trajectories of different building envelope systems (i.e. walls, roofs and floors) at various domains ranging from materials and components to large-scale structures. The analyses of exemplary different materials and technologies systems will be studied through, among others, opaque, translucent and transparent solutions, and dynamic (controllable and adaptive) building envelopes such as e.g. user interactive and climate responsive building envelopes.

The analyses will be conveyed around, but not limited to, to a greater or lesser extent the following both general and more specific topics:

• traditional and high-performance thermal insulation materials,
• vacuum insulation panels,
• aerogels,
• gas-filled panels,
• nano and super insulation materials,
• phase change materials,
• aerogel-incorporated concrete and mortar,
• exterior and interior thermally retrofitting of existing buildings,
• protection from radon ingress,
• traditional and advanced fenestration systems,
• solar radiation glazing factors,
• multi-layered windows,
• safety glass,
• smart windows for regulation of the solar radiation transmittance, including e.g. electrochromic windows,
• low-emissivity materials,
• new lightweight and more thermally insulating aerogel glass materials,
• translucent aerogel windows and walls,
• self-cleaning window panes,
• snow- and ice-avoiding material surfaces for e.g. solar cell panels,
• building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV),
• multi-functional building envelopes,
• fire safety measures,
• wooden building envelopes,
• biomimetic adaptive building skins,
• interactive media facades,
• prefabricated building envelope systems,
• green and vertical farming facades,
• life cycle assessment in facade design,
• circular economy in facades.

Several methods will be used to investigate the addressed building envelope technologies including:

• background and principles,
• theoretical, conceptual and modelling studies,
• experimental investigations,
• state-of-the-art solutions, future research trajectories, and market opportunities as commercial products and applications.

The participants in the course will have the opportunity to be challenged and trained through group and brain-storming sessions with respect to future research trends and opportunities for emerging advanced and sustainable building envelopes.

Finally, visits to our laboratories and full-scale test buildings dealing with the course topics related to building envelopes will also be organized.

Learning outcome

Learning outcome as indicated within the topics as mentioned under course content.

Learning methods and activities

Lectures, exercises, assignments, modelling and simulations, group work and brainstorming sessions, laboratory and field visits.

At the start of the course there will be two weeks with intensive teaching two following days the first week and two following days the second week. Thereafter, in the following months, the participants will write their assignment reports/articles on their chosen topic (see description elsewhere) utilizing what they have learnt during the course, while interacting as needed with the teachers of the course, and where the report/article is to be submitted before the deadline at the end of the course.

Further on evaluation

The grade will be determined based on evaluation of a hand-in assignment report/article.

Some considerations and possibilities in this respect:

• The specific topic of the report/article will be selected based on the interests of the participants within the course content.
• The report/article may be written by one single person or by two or more persons working together as a group, where the latter one may be beneficial if these persons are from the same company/institution and/or if these persons want to cover different fields.
• A possibility is to select a topic which the participant and/or his/her company/institution has an interest in learning more about and where it could be valuable for the company/institution to obtain a report/article within this topic.
• The report/article may be written in Norwegian or English.
• The report/article may if desired be written as a scientific article (in English) intended for publication at a scientific conference or in a scientific journal.
• A small part of the report/article may contain a short popular article (1-4 pages) intended for publication in an appropriate trade journal (in Norwegian for national trade journals and in English for international ones).

Specific conditions

Recommended previous knowledge

Recommended to have a background corresponding to e.g. the courses:

• TBA4160 / TBM4222 Building Physics Basic Course
• BYGT2311 Building Technology
• or any equivalent or similar courses/background/experience.

Note that it will be possible to follow this course with an appropriate interest and informal/real competence within the building sector.

The course is part of NTNUs continuing education portfolio and has a student fee.

Course materials

• Rethinking skins. Transformative technologies and research trajectories (book).
• Other books/book chapters.
• Scientific literature (e.g., articles and reports).
• National and international standards.
• Lectures (which will be made available).
• Details will be made available at a later stage.