Performance-Based Façades: Retrofit Strategies for Energy Efficiency and Comfort in Existing Office Buildings

The building industry is faced with a vast stock of existing buildings that are not sustainable and suffer from poor conditions in terms of physical problems. Energy retrofitting of existing buildings is presumed as a rational strategy to minimize buildings' environmental impact in the long term. Standard building retrofits focus on prescriptive measures to comply with energy standards rather than occupant requirements. In contrast, the proposed performance-based retrofit approach focuses primarily on indoor comfort to leverage the non-energy benefits of retrofit besides the strategies to improve the energy performance of the building. Specifically, in the case of office buildings, most of the energy saving options and required high levels of indoor comfort are in conflict with each other and need to be balanced. This study argues the most responsive office type for the proposed façade retrofit framework. The main contribution is presenting a framework, which relates occupant comfort requirements to building façade performance and can be used by stakeholders and end users throughout the initial stages of a retrofit process. It can also form the basis of future decision-support tools that can be developed in the future