Multistory building envelope: Creative design and enhanced performance

For all three design approaches, the most important stage towards achieving high performance is to design an energy efficient building envelope. Comparison of energy performance of complex façade geometries to the base case, indicates that these geometrical patterns do not significantly compromise the thermal performance of the building, while enabling a considerable increase in the electricity generation potential by integrated photovoltaic systems. In folded-plate façade systems, this increase in PV potential is observed on per unit area basis as well as per total façade area. In addition, some of these façade patterns allow time spread of useful electricity generation of the BIPV systems. Combining folded façade geometry with building layouts that allow large south and near south exposure has the potential of enabling energy positive status. While the paper focuses on residential buildings, the methodology can be applied to any type of high-rise building.