Designing the Right Double Skin Facade

In optimising the performance of a building façade, it is paramount to intellectually investigate its performance relative to the local climate, internal occupancy comfort criteria for the building, and associated carbon impact goal the Owner wants to achieve. Understanding the carbon impact is dependant on the long term energy demands (or costs) for the building. Double skin façades offer exciting opportunities to reduce energy consumption and to passively manage comfort conditions while enabling large areas of glass with high levels of visual transparency. Achieving a balance between conflicting design parameters and client aspirations begins at the concept design stage. It requires a multi-disciplinary, multi-faceted engineering approach which encompasses structural glass design, building science, thermal and energy profile simulation, solar and daylight penetration analysis, structural design, sustainable assessment methods, and whole life cycle cost analysis. This integrated design approach facilitates optimization of the façade performance and ensures maximum value is achieved for the building owner. This paper addresses the issues facing façade/structural engineers today and the tools available to assist the design team in establishing an optimum double skin façade design.