Publications related to Building

Teaching Not To

Two design studios were successively taught in two schools of architecture: one at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and the other at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland, based on "A Global Morato ...

Taylor & Francis Inc2024

RE:SLAB — a load bearing system for open-ended component reuse in building structures

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Jan Friedrich Georg Brütting, Dario Redaelli, Edisson Xavier Estrella Arcos, Alex-Manuel Muresan

The construction industry plays a major role in the high levels of greenhouse gas emissions, resource consumption, and waste generation observed nowadays. Key to the circular economy, structural component reuse arises as a promising solution to divert cons ...

2024

What is NExT? A new conceptual model for comfort, satisfaction, health, and well-being in buildings

Dusan Licina

Buildings are designed to respond to functional and regulatory needs, providing comfortable conditions to occupants, offering satisfactory environmental settings, minimising health risks, and enhancing individual and collective quality of life. Although th ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2024

Embodied Carbon Premium for Cantilevers

David Michael Volpe Ruggiero, Paola Costanza Miglietta

This study addresses the critical need for sustainable architectural designs within the context of climate change and the significant role the built environment plays in greenhouse gas emissions. The focus of this paper is on understanding the influence of ...

2024

Digital Twins of Stone Masonry Buildings for Damage Assessment

Katrin Beyer, Radhakrishna Achanta, Bryan German Pantoja Rosero

Digital twins are virtual models of physical objects or systems that enable real-time monitoring and analysis. In the ﬁeld of stone masonry buildings, digital twins can be used to assess damage, predict maintenance needs, and opti- mize building performanc ...

Springer2024

Building structures made of reused cut reinforced concrete slabs and walls: A case study

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Maléna Bastien Masse, Nicole Widmer

Reuse of reinforced concrete (RC) components reduces construction’s environmental impacts and waste. Rather than crushing the concrete of an obsolete structure, its components are saw cut and later reassembled in a new structure. The theoretical feasibilit ...

CRC Press2023

Autodigit-RAD: Towards an automation of the radon’s concentration dataflow in a new and innovative building

Sergi Aguacil Moreno, Sebastian Duque Mahecha

Radon is a noble, natural, and radioactive gas coming mainly from the ground which might accumulate indoors and lead each year to 200-300 deaths from lung cancer in Switzerland. A brand new and innovative living lab will be built as of 2023 in Fribourg (Sw ...

2023

Taking a step back from glass towers facades to make them compatible with the 2050 targets

Sergi Aguacil Moreno, Bernard Paule

Skyscrapers or glass towers are an extremely common model throughout the world. In the current context of climate change and resource depletion, we need to develop new postures towards these objects, especially for existing buildings that are becoming obso ...

2023

A Reuse-Ready Timber Slab-and-Column System for Modular Building Structures

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Jonas Warmuth, Jan Friedrich Georg Brütting, Alex-Manuel Muresan, Edisson Xavier Estrella Arcos

The construction industry is a significant contributor to resource consumption and waste generation. To address this issue, component reuse has been proposed as a way to prevent valuable building elements from being discarded and avoid producing new ones. ...

Curran Associates, Inc.2023

Preserving suspended structures with light façades (1960-1980). Architectural study and retrofitting proposals

Giuseppe Galbiati

Nowadays, the energy efficiency of the existing building stock is internationally accepted as a topical issue. Energy retrofitting is encouraged, improving the thermal performances of buildings, but often altering the historical image of our cities. Attent ...

EPFL2023

Acquaintances or Familiar Strangers? How Similarity and Spatial Proximity Shape Neighbour Relations within Residential Buildings

Maxime Carl Felder, Guillaume Favre

While scholars have long established that city dwellers choose with whom to develop relationships on the basis of social proximity, spatial proximity remains the basis for neighbour relations involving greetings, social conversation, and the exchange of se ...

ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD2023

Seismic Testing of Adjacent Interacting Masonry Structures

Katrin Beyer, Igor Tomic, Andrea Penna

Masonry buildings form building aggregates around the world in historical centers, which developed as the layout of the city or village densified. In these aggregates, adjacent buildings can share structural walls, connected at the interfaces by interlocki ...

2023

Towards real-time digital twins for post-earthquake damage assessment of masonry buildings

Katrin Beyer, Radhakrishna Achanta, Bryan German Pantoja Rosero

Currently, post-earthquake assessment is performed visually, which implies that inspectors visit the damaged buildings and, based on their expertise, assign a damage grade. Yet, visual inspection is subjective, time-consuming and difficult to document. In ...

2023

Correlation between sonic pulse velocity and flat-jack tests for the estimation of the elastic properties of unreinforced brick masonry: Case studies from Croatia

Savvas Saloustros

Historic urban cores in southern Europe are characterized by a significant number of existing unreinforced masonry structures that are known for their seismic vulnerability. The first step in the preservation of such damaged buildings is condition assessme ...

2023

Inter- and intra-individual variability in CO2 production and metabolic rate

Dolaana Khovalyg, Mohamad Rida

Carbon dioxide generated by the human body and exhaled (VCO2) is commonly used for ventilation controls, while the metabolic rate (i.e., energy expenditure EE) is an important parameter defining human thermal comfort in buildings. These two parameters are ...

2023

Building ventilation and outdoor air pollution: Implications for health, comfort and energy

Evangelos Belias

As humans spend most of their time indoors, indoor air quality (IAQ) significantly impacts their health. In parallel, building ventilation consumes significant energy, contributing to climate change. However, the relationships between the building ventilat ...

EPFL2023

Energy, SBS symptoms, and productivity in Swiss open-space offices: Economic evaluation of standard, actual, and optimum scenarios

Dusan Licina, Dolaana Khovalyg, Arnab Chatterjee, Verena Marie Barthelmes, Cecile Anne Berquand

The fundamental aspiration of new-generation high-performing buildings is to reduce energy use while securing indoor environmental quality conducive to human health and productivity. However, existing frameworks for identifying Key Performance Indicators ( ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2023

Endogenous Energy Efficiency Improvement in Housing and Cement Sectors in Switzerland

Sergey Arzoyan

The reduction of energy consumption in the residential building stock and cement industry is a substantial component of the Swiss Energy Strategy 2050. Therefore, it is vital to identify the potential for EEI in these two sectors. In this study, a new meth ...

EPFL2023