Building Envelope
The building envelope, or building enclosure, protects us and the building interior from the elements and enables occupant comfort. The building envelope includes the cladding, air barrier, weather barrier, thermal insulation, and other components.
Building Envelope
Deep Dives
Get up to speed on complex topics. You can also earn CEUs and download PDF Spotlight Reports.
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Cladding: More Than Just a Pretty Façade
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Cladding materials should be chosen to minimize environmental impacts and help maximize a building’s energy performance.
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Mind the Gaps: Making Existing Buildings More Airtight
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Leaky building enclosures create health hazards, comfort problems, and high energy bills. Fixing them isn’t rocket science; but you’d better know your building science.
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Design for Adaptation: Living in a Climate-Changing World
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Even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow, rising global temperatures would still bring major changes to the climate system and our way of life. This article offers solutions for designing buildings that not only mitigate our impact on the global climate, but also adapt to the changes that are coming-and those that are already here.
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Designing for the Next Century's Weather
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How do you create a climate-responsive building in a changing climate? Brand new modeling techniques are helping us figure it out.
Quick Takes
Jump straight to the essentials with these short explanations of green building concepts.
Product Guidance
Unbiased information from our product experts helps you separate green from greenwash.
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Quadruple-Glazed Window Includes Phase-Change Materials
Product Review
GlassX Crystal is a single glazing assembly that combines three insulating glazing units (IGUs) that include a prismatic filter and a phase-change material offering thermal mass.
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Infrared Cameras Provide View of Building Performance
Product Review
Infrared cameras are valuable, non-invasive tools for diagnosing potential problems in buildings and electrical and mechanical equipment.
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Foamglas Insulation: A Great Option for Below Grade
Product Review
Foamglas is a highly durable, noncombustible, cellular glass, rigid boardstock insulation material that can be used in a wide range of applications, including load-bearing and below-grade. Because it contains neither flame retardants nor blowing agents that contribute to global warming, it is an attractive alternative to extruded polystyrene for green building.
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New Heat Mirror Glazing for Commercial Applications
Product Review
Southwall Technologies and Dow Corning have introduced a glazing system that will allow high-performance Heat Mirror glazings to be used in "structural sealant glazing" in commercial buildings.
In The News
We break news down to the essentials and provide expert analysis.
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Will Aggressive Performance Goals Fit Under Google’s Glass Tent?
News Analysis
The design of Google’s green headquarters hinges on new technologies, like a “glass fabric” enclosure.
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Polyiso Impacts Are High, but Performance May Make Up for Them
News Analysis
An EPD for polyisocyanurate insulation shows large embodied impacts while suggesting R-value cancels some of them out.
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Styrofoam’s Chemistry Becoming Less Hazardous, Gradually
News Analysis
The world’s leading manufacturer of extruded polystyrene will phase out a toxic flame retardant around 2017 and problematic blowing agents by 2020.
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The Search for Better Insulation Continues
News Analysis
We can all celebrate 25 years of improvements to insulation, but we still have a wish list of seven better products we’d like to see.
Perspective
Thought-provoking opinions from the most trusted minds in sustainability.
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Learning Resources
Syllabus supplements and CEU content, with automatic reporting for AIA and GBCI.
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