The Course: The Building Envelope offers you a unique opportunity to break into a booming sector, where the demand for skilled professionals is growing every day. Today, energy efficiency and comfort in architectural design are more important than ever. Through this course, You will acquire essential skills for optimising a building’s envelope, improving both its energy efficiency and the health and wellbeing of its occupants. You will learn about the fundamental principles of energy efficiency and its application in modern buildings, whilst also exploring how it affects health and indoor comfort. This course will give you a competitive edge in the job market, enabling you to play a part in the transition towards a more sustainable future. By taking the ‘Building Envelope’ course, you will not only broaden your knowledge, but also become an agent of change in sustainable construction.
The building envelope
Architecture, construction and urban planning
40 hours
Introduction
Objectives
- To understand the importance of the building envelope in a building’s energy efficiency.
- Identify key elements that improve the energy efficiency of the building envelope.
- To analyse how the building envelope contributes to thermal comfort in indoor spaces.
- To assess the impact of the building envelope on the health of the building’s occupants.
- Propose improvements to the building envelope to optimise energy consumption.
- Apply sustainability principles to the building envelope.
- Identify effective materials for improving the building envelope and comfort.
Table of Contents
TEACHING UNIT 1. INTRODUCTION
Building Energy Efficiency. Physical Concepts I
Building Energy Efficiency. Physical Concepts II
Bioclimatic strategies
Psychometric diagram
Bioclimatic diagram
TEACHING UNIT 2. ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND BUILDING ENVELOPE I
Envelope Elements
Envelope characteristics
Sun protection
Thermal bridges
THERM, thermal bridge calculation software
TEACHING UNIT 3. ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND BUILDING ENVELOPE II
Heat transfer. Balance of gains and losses
Water ingress and ventilation through the building envelope
Building envelopes in nearly zero-energy buildings
Energy-efficiency refurbishment of the building envelope
Examples
TEACHING UNIT 4. HEALTH AND WELL-BEING
Thermal comfort
Acoustic and lighting comfort
Natural lighting
Natural ventilation
Prevention of condensation