FTI Report on Barriers and Strategies Related to the Use of High-Performance Facades Released
The Façade Tectonics Institute has released its final report addressing the market transformation to high-performance facades. The report was the culmination of research conducted through a U.S. Department of Energy grant awarded in 2023. The findings identify the many interconnected barriers to the adoption of high-performance facades, as well as strategies to overcome them. FTI has provided a blueprint for the implementation of strategies that could systematically reduce the barriers to adoption of high-performance façades and drive the market transformation needed to achieve sustainable, human centric buildings.
FTI Advocacy Committee members Helen Sanders and Steve Selkowitz gathered input from over 100 industry professionals via virtual and live roundtable discussions. Participants represented the architectural, engineering, construction, and building code communities. The findings identified seven main categories of barriers which have additional cascading and interlinked root causes. A key barrier is that high-performance façades are a significant increase in first costs. This is driven by lax codes which set the cost baseline, price premiums on new or different, and insufficient availability of solutions. Other barrier categories include insufficient return on investment, risk aversion, which drives to maintaining status quo, HVAC driven design, and lax code compliance in many jurisdictions.
In addition to this input, Sanders and Selkowitz examined examples of public policy and other incentive programs that are being used to effectively drive the installation of better fenestration and façades. The final report includes a lessons learned chapter featuring case studies from Vancouver, British Columbia, Massachusetts, Seattle, Washington, and London.
The full report, “High-Performance Facades: Barriers to Widespread Adoption in Non-residential and Multi-family Buildings and Strategies to Overcome them,” is available on the FTI website. https://www.facadetectonics.org/publications/collection/publications#entry:58756@1:url
Sanders and Selkowitz will be joined by Ivan Lee, from Morrison and Hershfield in Vancouver and James Smith, from Related in Boston to discuss the findings of the study at the FTI World Congress in Salt Lake City, October 8-10. Register here:
The Report Leaders
Helen Sanders, PhD, is a General Manager at Technoform North America. She has 30 years of experience in glass technology, market development and manufacturing, in coatings, insulating glass and thermal zone technology for fenestration. Sanders has a doctorate in surface science from the University of Cambridge. She currently serves as the President of the Façade Tectonics Institute and leads its Advocacy Committee.
Stephen Selkowitz is a leading researcher of energy efficiency in building envelopes. He is currently a senior advisor for building science at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is a retired Senior Advisor for Building Science and former Group Leader of the Windows and Envelope Materials Group in the Building Technology and Urban Systems Division. Steve is a Board member of the Façade Tectonics Institute and serves on its Advocacy Committee.
About Facade Tectonics Institute
The Facade Tectonics Institute (FTI) is the premier member organization for building industry and professionals as well as academic, government, and nonprofit organizations and institutions focused on healthy and livable communities. The Institute’s primary objective is to fuel discussion and collaborative research that bridges fragmented market segments of the building industry, pairing government, academia, ownership, and industry professionals. Integral to this mission is the dissemination of historical, theoretical, and practical information derived from this research to the building marketplace, thereby acting as a conduit and facilitator for both learning and further collaborative research pursuits.