New sustainability assessment model for Intelligent Façade Layers when applied to refurbish school buildings skins

Abstract

In regard to increasing reports toward severe comfort problems and high energy consumption by educational buildings in many countries, a sustainable refurbishment for these edifices is urgently required. Using Intelligent Façade Layers as a protective cover with a variety of possible energy sources would be an innovative rehabilitation alternative, which until now has had outstanding performances in other architectural applications.This research paper, overcoming the lack of comprehensive assessments on Intelligent Façades, develops a new model to quantitatively assess the sustainability of these façades when applied to optimize existing educational architecture. This model combines the multi-criteria decision-making MIVES method with the Delphi technique, relying on literature, real projects and sensitivity analyses. The model considers the main economic, environmental and social aspects in its steps: 1) model boundaries, 2) experts’ qualification, 3) requirements tree, 4) weights assignment, 5) value functions, 6) sustainability indexes and 7) most sustainable alternatives. This model has been applied and validated in five Intelligent Façade Layers alternatives and three case studies at schools in Barcelona, Spain. This new approach proved highly reliable, showing the need for optimizations in both economic and environmental impacts applied to refurbishment scenarios. In this sense, future steps will design optimized alternatives.