Façade design plays an important role in building performance and occupant comfort. In a recent article, Architect’s Newspaper surveyed the leading women in façade design, including PAYETTE Principal and Director of Building Science Andrea Love, on the challenges and opportunities of façade design in the architectural industry. The responses offer an informal cross section of challenges including climate change and security and a discussion on the multi-material revolution in façade design.
In the article, Andrea Love discusses some of our current research projects and tool developments for façade design including a tool that determines the impact glazing has on summer comfort to complement our Glazing and Winter Comfort Tool.
We are also exploring the life cycle assessment of typical facade systems to understand their embodied environmental impact. We continue to explore new ways to leverage simulation tools to understand performance and drive design on several projects across our office.
The thing I find most interesting about façades today is the increase in attention paid toward their role in building performance and occupant comfort. Whether it is a high-performance façade for passive survivability for resiliency or consideration of the embodied carbon impact, I find it exciting to see how we as an industry are embracing the important role that facades play.
Andrea Love, AIA, LEED Fellow
Read the article.
The 2025 OpenLAB Boston studio work will be exhibited at Virginia Tech Monday, March 2nd through Wednesday, March 4th.
Please join us for the following events on Monday, March 2nd:
11:00am - Lecture with Parke MacDowell
1:00pm Lobby talk with Kevin Sullivan
This year’s studio identifies seven sites along the frayed edges of Boston’s Greenway. The Greenway is a one-mile-long linear park running through the heart of the city, reconnecting downtown Boston with its waterfront. Many of the parcels along its edges remain undeveloped and present mute, blank facades to the public realm. Addressing and repairing these edges through acts of infilling, layering, grafting, framing, and placemaking is the core focus of the studio—SUTURE.