Examining the Role of Building Envelopes towards achieving Sustainable Buildings

Buildings are long known to be a major resource consumer and contribute substantially to environmental deterioration. The building envelope, being the interface between the building and the environment, controls the interactions between them. It does so by firstly filtering out the undesirable external environmental elements and subsequently affecting the amount and rate of resource consumption and environmental deterioration by the building in order to regulate the interior conditions. This paper aims to investigate the ways in which the building envelope can impact upon the sustainability of the building and the magnitude of the impact through an extensive literature review. The concept of building sustainability and sustainable building rating systems and guidelines are first reviewed. Criteria of sustainable buildings are established and grouped into 4 aspects, i.e. economic, environmental, social and functional. Based on these 4 aspects, the impact of building envelope on the building sustainability is examined. It was found that the building envelope has significant impact on the initia