Sustainable Building Design

Chapter 5The Building Envelope

Michael Beaven¹, Mick Brundle¹, Paul Dickenson¹, Miles Keeping², Robert Pugh¹ and David Shiers³

¹Arup Associates, London, W1T 4BQ, UK

²Hillbreak Ltd., Buckinghamshire, HP18 9TH, UK

³School of the Built Environment,, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, OX3 0BP, UK

The building envelope includes any part of the building which separates the external and internal environments, also the ground floor, outer walls, roof, windows and doors.

Enclosing and fitting-out a building provide shelter from rain, wind, snow and extremes of hot and cold, offering comfort and security for occupiers and users. Whilst many human settlements are still built using available local materials such as timber, mud brick, straw and stone, most modern buildings use industrially produced construction materials and advanced technologies to provide a high level of moisture-and-sound resistance, structural stability, thermal comfort and energy efficiency.

Some historic examples of the use of stone and timber can be seen at the websites below including Neolithic stone buildings at Skara Brae on Orkney, Scotland and a reconstruction of a Neolithic fortified village showing a palisade wall and stilt houses at the Pfahlbau Museum Unteruhldingen, Germany.

1. http://jmir3.no.sapo.pt/Ebook2/History.of.Building_Britannica.Parte_1de%202.pdf
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_construction)

In the United Kingdom, materials such as locally produced thatch for roofs, timber framing and ...