ResearchPod
ResearchPod
How might Adaptive Façades Revolutionize Building Energy Efficiency?
Heating and cooling our homes, workplaces and public spaces is a source of constant effort, and expense. What can new technologies offer to help hold warmth, or aid air circulation? What if one solution could do both?
Dr Miren Jauristi Gutierrez from Eurac Research in Bolzano, Italy, joins us to discuss innovative architectural features that could save energy, money, and carbon in future designs.
Find more at : https://zeraf-technology.eu/
00:00:05 Will Mountford
Hello I'm will, welcome to research pod.
00:00:08 Will Mountford
Heating and cooling our homes, workplaces and public spaces is a source of constant effort and expense.
00:00:16 Will Mountford
So what can new technologies offer to help hold warmth or aid to refresh our buildings?
00:00:22 Will Mountford
What if one solution could do both?
00:00:25 Will Mountford
Today I'm speaking with Doctor Miren Juaristi Gutierrez from Eurac research in Bolzano, Italy, about her work on innovative architectural features that could save energy, money and carbon in future designs.
00:00:43 Will Mountford
And joining me from the Eurac Research Institute, doctor Juaristi, how are?
00:00:47 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
You doing everything good? Everything look. Thanks for having me here.
00:00:50 Will Mountford
For everyone listening at home and for a bit of my own background as well, could you tell me a bit about yourself? The work that you do at your? I mean what Eurac is as a whole and a little bit about what brings us here today?
00:01:02 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
So I am an architect as a background and when I was a child, I imagined myself as an architect to be honest.
00:01:09 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
And then within my studies, I wanted to be more confident answering to the current challenges that our planet had. And I feel that to do that, I needed to study it further. So I started the PhD and I did it in the topic of adaptive facets, which I found.
00:01:29 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Fascinating because it was trying to change the paradigm of how we build and how we get comfortable in our conditions.
00:01:40 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
This passion increased within my PhD, so I work on the topic and when I finished I didn't want to come back to the regular architecture practice that I could knew about while I was studying and doing some internships and so on, I decided to continue with the research work.
00:01:59 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
First, with a postdoc and as a senior researcher, so.
00:02:04 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
I did my studies in the same university that I did architecture degree, so I got there my PhD in the University of Navarra in Spain. As I am in Spanish.
00:02:14 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
But this PhD journey was also pretty international for me, so I had a period in Tudela in the Netherlands, and then almost a year in the polytechnical of touring in Italy.
00:02:27 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Where I learned Italian, so that was also easy to then move to the Research Institute in the north of Italy, where I am now and which was perfect to continue my field of study because you need really specialized laboratories and also team to be able to do the research that I do. So it is a perfect fit and I.
00:02:48 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
I feel really well in this Research Institute.
00:02:51 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Eurac is a private Research Institute in the north of Italy in the autonomous province of Bolzano, and we do apply research to improve the lives of citizens and among the goals that we have. It's contributing to have a more sustainable planet and research on the Institute of the Renewable Energies.
00:03:13 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Within the energy efficient billing groups, where we are contributing with our research to meet the carbonization targets of the building sector in the European Union. So right now if we look at.
00:03:27 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
The building stock of the European Union, its accountable of the 40% of the energy that is consumed, and this means that also it is accountable of the 36% of the energy related greenhouse gas emissions that the European Union emits.
00:03:47 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
So having a sustainable built environment is really key.
00:03:51 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
We want to reach the carbon neutrality targets that we set by 2050, so it's an industry that cannot continue doing it as it is with no innovation because it would mean that we don't reach that target, which is really, really essential and not to find ourselves in a climate change.
00:04:12 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Scenarios that it's unreversed able and really traumatic. So that's one of the challenge and the other challenge is that we think of buildings.
00:04:22 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
75% of the buildings that are already there are not energy efficient at all, which are the responsible of these emissions and energy consumptions that I mentioned and the good or bad news is that almost all of them will still be there in 2050. So finding ways of making them.
00:04:44 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
More sustainable is really essential.
00:04:47 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
We really, really need to do something with the buildings that we have already built there because most of the buildings that we have right now are going to still be there in 2050 and the way they are using energy right now is not sustainable because this means that there are many greenhouse gas emissions.
00:05:09 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Related to having heated or cooled spaces in our buildings, so if we don't dramatically reduce them, we will find ourselves in a scenario.
00:05:20 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Where we won't be able to stop the climate change scenario, but if you don't feel yourself in 2050 because you only you do a carpet in person, the bad news is that the buildings as they are built right now are not even comfortable in many times of the year.
00:05:41 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Because as they were built many years ago when we had other climates, we are not able to provide in US comfortable spaces. So think about heat waves that we are having so.
00:05:53 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
I am sure that many of you have felt how your home is not ready or your offices are not ready to deal with it to cope with it and you have too much heat. So that's why we need to change the way these feelings are behaving right now by doing some interventions. I am sure you have seen many.
00:06:13 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Changes in the building facades and this is the reason behind because we need to update them so that we have comfortable indoor conditions both in winter and summer.
00:06:27 Will Mountford
So just cover some of the terms for anyone listening this. What is meant by a buildings facade? Now we get into some of the claddings and smart systems and kind of breakdown a little bit of the language before we get into the technology.
00:06:40 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
So building pass that, let's say, the physical barriers that we have between the indoor and outdoor spaces, so it's the wall that separates the building.
00:06:51 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Comfort zone in the inside of the building from the weather agents or from the rain, but also from the heat or from wind. And as this is the physical barrier that we have between the two of them, they have a great role on modulating heat.
00:07:11 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
That it's transferred or blocked from one environment to the other. That's why the facade design is so key to get energy efficient and comfortable buildings.
00:07:22 Will Mountford
And what kind of facades are there when is a wall more complicated than just bricks?
00:07:29 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Traditional wall, at least in Europe, traditional facade we all think of brick layer that in the best cases you have some insulation material that prevents the heat to get loose or to get gained and finally coating or finishing that makes that.
00:07:50 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
The facades look different, also depending on the cultural context, and right now the benchmark or the traditional approach to make energy efficient buildings is to.
00:08:01 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Get this insulation on layer thicker or of materials that block the heaters change as much as possible. However, this approach of having really highly insulating buildings lead us to some problems that before we didn't have in mostly.
00:08:21 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Hitting dominated climate where we were worried about having comfortable conditions in winter, but with the climate change scenarios, what is happening that these super insulating buildings are creating new problems? So we are having over.
00:08:36 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Eating in indoor spaces in summer or even mid season periods, and this is because we insulated these buildings too much. So based on this, some of the researchers propose a paradigm change. That was the one that fascinated me and that led me to the.
00:08:57 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
PH. D afterwards of considering the the facade not so much as a thermal.
00:09:04 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
A barrier or a barrier to any environmental agenda. It can be seen as a threat like wind or rain, but instead as a modulator. So a modulator means that we decide whether we block or exchange the heat and.
00:09:24 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
In this sense, there are many technological approaches that have been conceptualized, so we only think of the facades that are opaque. So with no transmission of light, so we are not talking about Windows or fully glass facets, but the other kind of face.
00:09:42 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
And we have in the literature some concepts like Pareto dynamic walls where we have a regular brick wall. If we want with that insulation layer. But the difference is that we have some openings in the top and bottom part of these walls, so when we.
00:10:01 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Open them will let the air pass and therefore we are enabling also the heat exchange between the indoor and outdoor environment.
00:10:10 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
The problem of this is that we also let noise pass and also pollution. So maybe because of that it didn't reach the market maturity or because other reasons. But the truth is that there is no widespread application of them.
00:10:27 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Another concept that is looking at reaching this paradigm chain would be the permit dynamic insulations. So here we don't have openings.
00:10:38 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
We have instead material that enables the air traveling through the wall when there is a pressure difference. So to get the pressure difference between the indoor and outdoor environment, we put a fan inside the building to force the pressure.
00:10:59 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Difference and therefore to let the air travel and with the air the the heat transfer.
00:11:05 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Also, this approach can have some drawbacks, such as with trial of the air you have traveled off dust or other particles and therefore its durability and its ability to be permeable can be limited in time, or maybe because other reasons.
00:11:25 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Because there are many reasons why an innovation don't reach the market, the truth is that also this one is not really implemented in the real world.
00:11:36 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
These are two approaches and the third one would be having movable elements. So instead of having an insulation layer that you put it in the wall and it's fixed forever, you do it as a panel that you can open or close. So when it's open, it's like virtually not having an insulation layer and when it's.
00:11:56 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Because you have it here, the problems would be the space that takes to have a movable.
00:12:04 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
All this would replace the concept of traditional insulation and the last one that I would like to mention that for me would be the most promising 1.
00:12:16 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
It's the fact of having a closed loop insulation active insulation system where you force the air moving inside a closed panel. So.
00:12:28 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Here again, forcing the air with some vents or something similar or another fluid when you are forcing it, you are enabling the heat exchange and when you stop it you have a regular insulation and here you don't have any exchange of air or particles so you get more.
00:12:48 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Robust and durable solutions, so these were some of the examples that I found within my PhD, like Nice Concepts, but that weren't really then prototype and studied further.
00:13:04 Will Mountford
It's moving from heat retention to heat management is already going to be, I think, a challenge for a lot of the building systems and the buildings themselves. That exists especially in the UK where just everything is made to hold heat, but then to layer on the additional technology that people are working on now in making those smart management systems, how smart.
00:13:25 Will Mountford
Are we talking?
00:13:26 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
We are talking that right now we can develop algorithms that decide when we need to open and close or when we need to move or not the air.
00:13:37 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
That when I did my PhD that I already finished four years ago, maybe the all the advances in the control logics were not in the stage that right now we are so right now with very few data.
00:13:53 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
We can really feel what's happening in the envy.
00:13:56 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Element and we can have really accurate predictions also of what's going to happen both in the external environment and internal environment, which gives us a huge opportunity to understand when we need to pass from blogging to exchanging the heat, not just.
00:14:17 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
To understanding what's happening right now, but also doing all the predictions and all the learnings from from past events. So it's more feasible than ever and the good news let's say is that we also need less sensing elements.
00:14:34 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Yes, because we have a lot of data already there.
00:14:39 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
That could seem not so visible so decade ago when they started with the parade didn't change idea.
00:14:52 Will Mountford
That leads on to the volatility of weather because you mentioned.
00:14:56 Will Mountford
That being smart with algorithms and with data means being able to forecast and adapt ahead of time this morning where I am in England, it's snowed a good couple of inches of snow on the ground, and then by 3:00 PM beautiful, glorious sunshine and now evenings drawing in. It's getting a little bit cloudy. How?
00:15:16 Will Mountford
Does that volatility in weather, especially like spring is going to be bad for its summer? We can rely on pretty much just hot winter generally just cold, but spring and autumn where weather can fluctuate, temperature wind can fluctuate so.
00:15:31 Will Mountford
What issues does that make for traditional architecture before we even get into how smart architecture can manage it?
00:15:37 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
So in the traditional architecture, you would have thought that in England you have much more severe winter, at least so far respect summer conditions. So you would have calculate the amount of insulation that you need based on.
00:15:54 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
This morning, conditions of having a snow and cold temperatures, so therefore you would have just decided to put the amount of insulation that you needed to be comfortable in that morning situation without then thinking of what would happen in the same.
00:16:14 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Afternoon. As you just said, or even in summer.
00:16:18 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
What we can do with adaptive facades is that we can have this high insulation level in this morning while it was snowing, and then when the sun started shining in the facade, maybe in the afternoon.
00:16:35 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Getting a really high temperatures in the outer surf.
00:16:39 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Trace, we could already exploit that heat to let it enter in our building so that when the sun stops shining, you come back to the installation mode and you store that heat that you could have access to within the few hours that was.
00:16:59 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Available.
00:17:00 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
And yes, we can think of summer pretty much warm situation, but even in a summer night you can have fresh air, period. So in summer conditions, maybe the same insulation layer during the day time would have been the best design strategy As for the?
00:17:21 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Moment that it was snowing, but On the contrary, in the summer night, being able to dissipate. So removing this insulation or this coat, let's say to the building, it's really needed so that it can get out. All this heat from inside the building so.
00:17:38 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
That you have more comfortable conditions to sleep or even to within the first hours of of the morning without no need of having cooling system on.
00:17:51 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
So it's about exploiting the fact that the sun is shining and hitting your facade, or the fact of exploiting that you have fresh air temperature in the outside in the summer night compared to the heat that was accumulated during the day inside your building or created by you because you were cool.
00:18:11 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Being or having a party at home with many people, so then you need to dissipate the internal heat gains that were generated inside the building. So this is what we mean by splitting the boundary conditions. So what is happening in the outside or in the inside of the building, it can be managed in the best way to get.
00:18:32 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
And the uncomfortable condition that it's what we want.
00:18:35 Will Mountford
Now that sounds like it's something that is, as you said, going to be different for England where we have the volatility to sunny Spain or northern Italy. Is it a case of finding just the right facade arrangement for each one or does a parieto dynamic or Permian dynamic system favour different era?
00:18:56 Will Mountford
It's to think of rather than just A1 size fits all approach. Is there kind of like this technology will do well here there elsewhere?
00:19:05 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
In reality, that so if we think of static fast that it's much more important that we find the best arrangement to the different climates because you only can behave in one way.
00:19:18 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Instead, for adaptive facades, the best technology that then you can find, if it guarantees you that it goes from highly insulating mode to low insulating mode.
00:19:31 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
That solution will be the one working of it everywhere. So the problems that we can have with premium dynamic compared to dynamic, it's not so much that one is better to the other in an environment but they have some problems related to the durability.
00:19:49 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Instead, if we have a facade that it's has a good adaptation range, it can be applied in many contexts. That doesn't mean that in all those contexts it will have.
00:20:02 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
The same impacts. So if we just go to put it really in extreme situation, if you go to really cold climate where you always have cold, then maybe you don't need an adaptive facet because you really need to protect from the outdoor environment always.
00:20:22 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
And you don't have those spaces in or those temporary spaces where.
00:20:30 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
You have these warmer conditions outside or the sun hitting in such a way that can be beneficial for you, so it's more a matter of where we have a climate where adaptation makes sense because you don't have just one need, which is many climates are like this or many building.
00:20:50 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Technologies. But then once that we are there, a technology able to have a substantial adaptation range will be the 1 winner.
00:20:59 Will Mountford
I think that leads neatly on to the work that you're seeing through Eurac and the Xerath project. Am I pronouncing that right?
00:21:07 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Yes, well, I say Seraph, but at the end it's an acronym. So.
00:21:13 Will Mountford
What is it an acronym for?
00:21:15 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
So Seraph stands for 0 Carbon Building enabler adaptive opaque facade.
00:21:20 Will Mountford
OK. And tell us all.
00:21:22
About that.
00:21:23 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
So we are developing within this. We had this grant from the European Innovation Council Pathfinder program, where they finance high risk hiring, research that is still in low technology readiness levels or low technology maturity levels that.
00:21:43 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
If successful, they are able to transform an industry, so you should do a still pretty based research kind of if this exists in the architectural environment.
00:21:56 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
But with a very clear market product vision. So you are in a really early stages, but with an idea that can transform full industry. So what we are working on within this project that I coordinate, it's on finding that technology.
00:22:16 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
That solves the issues that the target dynamic or personal dynamic concepts or moveable installation concepts had in order to have a robust technology that it's easy to install.
00:22:29 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
All.
00:22:30 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
That all the complexities are more intellectual and in the control and on finding the correct shape pattern, it's easily manufacturable so that we have a technology that can modulate the heat in a significant extent to a significant extent. So what I mean with that is that.
00:22:51 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
We have this adaptation range that I mentioned to you before really high, so that we pass from very, very highly insulating as a technology to almost virtually eliminating it.
00:23:04 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
So this is the ambition.
00:23:06 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
What we are proposing in siraf technology in order to have this control of the heat transfer, so to go from really highly insulating to the nail on the heat going from the indoor to the outdoor is somehow what we are proposing is to be able to change the clothes to our building.
00:23:27 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
And like this we can control the heat that the heat exchange that happens by radiation, conduction and convection.
00:23:36 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
So to make this more representative example or easier to follow, think of when you have a teacher that is stark compared to a.
00:23:47 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
White color one and the sun is hitting you. You feel really different temperature, right? So somehow this is what we are doing with syrup. So we are changing the color of the tech shirt so that when the radiation hits, we can have higher or lower temperature depending on what is needed.
00:24:07 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
And if we go then to the heat transfer that occurs by conduction, this means from particle to particle or in solid bodies.
00:24:18 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
We could think of the difference of having a building that has a thick jumper compared to a thin T-shirt. So because of the amount of material that we have there, we are letting more heat pass through the through the building or less and finally.
00:24:38 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
We also have the example of the convection heat losses. So what happens because of the air is in movement. So here the example with the closest would be.
00:24:49 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Be to think of the difference that you feel when you have a cotton T-shirt compared to the one that you use. For instance, to do sport that has some kind of holes inside it, right? So in the one with holes and you are letting the air that is in movement to be in contact with your skin which produces.
00:25:09 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
He loses, so you feel less warm. So somehow we are also able to controlling this within syrup. So we basically change the clothes so the color virtually let's say the amount of material and finally will change from having this T-shirt with the.
00:25:29 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Holes so that you when we want, we have more losses by convection or to pass to cotton type of T-shirt. So this would be the analogy of Terra with clothes.
00:25:40 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
In the building.
00:25:42 Will Mountford
That is a high ambition. Is it approaching soon? Is it still a distant goal? What kind of progress are you seeing in?
00:25:48
No.
00:25:49 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
So we started, we are right now in 2025, March and we started two years ago with this project. We started with the concept idea of the technology and in the first two years we did some further calculations in the technology concept, so also.
00:26:09 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Improve the very first.
00:26:11 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Technological ideas and right now what we are doing is we have the first prototypes of the FASAT technology and we are testing them in the laboratories that we have in your rack. So the different partners of the consortium built the different components. So from the.
00:26:32 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Active insulation made of biopolymer Ethan coming from India, Ismat in Barcelona thanks to a concept also that we work all together in the consortium and then also the actuators made of shape memory alloys provided by impulse smart sharing from the.
00:26:50 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Money. And we also have a couple of more partners in the consortiums coming from the Netherlands working on the technology consultant impact calculation. Yeah. So we have been working on making these products of the concept for the first time and now we are testing them.
00:27:10 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
In our labs so that we can see if we are really controlling the heat flux as we want and so blocking it effectively and dissipating it effectively. So we are doing all the tests with the different boundary conditions that we mentioned.
00:27:30 Will Mountford
Would you say that the project is borrowing well from any of the other candidates in the sector? Because it sounds like it's a very broad field for technology that might change the world. I could go in lots of different directions. Is cross collaboration in any way.
00:27:45 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Let's say that in the world of adaptive facades, there are not many examples that reach it or managed to be prototyped and tested in such specialized laboratories as in Europe.
00:27:58 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
So in this sense we are able for the first time of having a really good characterization of his adaptation range for opaque facades. So, and I don't see many more concepts like this being tested right now in Europe. So in this field of adaptive opaque facade.
00:28:18 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
We are happy.
00:28:20 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
With no competition, which doesn't mean that there are not other concepts of facades trying to have carbon neutral buildings, and actually in the research area that I am living in Europe, we have also other approaches so this is not the only one, even if it's the one that I am more.
00:28:39 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Passionate about that, I have other colleagues that works in other concepts which is really nice and actually then we compare the results that we get from one study.
00:28:51 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
So we are studying for instance, in multifunctional facades as innovative technologies to achieve comfortable and sustainable buildings, the insulation level of these facades is determined based on the expected average climate and indoor conditions, and they rely on having less greenhouse gas emissions.
00:29:12 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Dependency of the energy supply by producing energy on site. So there is a lot of research going on, having integrated prototypes and facades having in the facades. Also integrated the heating or cooling systems that you need so that when you renovate the building.
00:29:32 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Directly with the facade you are ensuring comfortable conditions with less energy demand and you do it everything with the facade, so this could be let's say, a technological approach that is competing in the future. If we reach the market with Sierra.
00:29:49 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Because at the end the goal is the same comfortable conditions with less energy and less greenhouse gas emissions, so also in Syria project we are going to compare the impacts that you would get with siraf to these type of multifunctional facades or also to natural ventilation. What happens just if I effectively.
00:30:09 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Open or close the window. Do I have similar improvements in indoor comfort us by applying?
00:30:16 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Data and when we do all these reasonings, we look at mostly, at least in the project in to to do 3 aspects. So on the one hand is the energy demand, how much energy you need to have comfortable air temperature inside your building, the greenhouse gas emissions, so that are related to the energy that you use.
00:30:37 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
For having comfort, but also to associated to the manufacturing of all the materials that are part of your technology. So how much emissions were associated?
00:30:49 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
To the manufacturing of the biopolymer ethane or or other components that we have in our Sierra Passat and the last one, it's the cost. So how much is the cost of the product to manufacture it, but also how much do I save energy bills wise?
00:31:10 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
And I have a faster that needs less energy to get comfortable conditions. So we compare syrups to other approaches like natural ventilation, multifunctional facades or benchmark facade in these means on these three parameters.
00:31:28 Will Mountford
In a perfect world of this succeeding and lots of other ventures and saving the world coming together, where would this kind of technology fit along? Something like solar panels for energy capture for electricity, building with reclaimed materials or recycled materials going into actual like construction of.
00:31:48 Will Mountford
Buildings, what would the ultimate dream of a 100% sustainable building be? Is that where this is hopefully a part of it?
00:31:56 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Yeah. So for sure in the built environment, we have so much area that we need to exploit also to produce energy, so.
00:32:03 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
As an architect, I could imagine that we use the roofs to have this photovoltaic panels to produce on side energy, and I know also that right now there is research going on having prototypes, elements integrated even in the transparent parts, so could be integrated.
00:32:23 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
There and even in the outer cladding of of syrup, we could place photovoltaics if.
00:32:29 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Needed. It's something that actually we are studying about having reclaimed materials. It's really important that the technology that we are designing right now can be turned easily disassemble so that when it reaches its end of life, we can use those.
00:32:50 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Components to build other.
00:32:52 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Set up facade without there for another building or other components. So our technology it's already compatible with reuse or remanufacturing of aluminum sheets or other kind of materials. So if the recent market, it's about having also the commitment of.
00:33:12 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Let's not use building materials to build Syria facets. And with the circular construction value changes would be feasible. It's more about transforming the industry more than the technology itself.
00:33:27 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
And then let's say that the it's true that the insulation material that we are exploring with our partner interest mat, it's a new material. So we don't have that already available in the building stock. So we cannot mine that material because it's a new material that we are producing. But the good news is that.
00:33:48 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
At least it comes for from bio sources, so we are substituting petrol to do an insulation match.
00:33:56 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Real.
00:33:57 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
And it comes from bio sources. So which at least it's better with less emissions related than if it was petrol based.
00:34:05 Will Mountford
Some.
00:34:06 Will Mountford
Only that you mentioned in the Zarif overview of this, of it being a technology to take to market and being a financial success as well as just the technological one in political times where climate is becoming less and less of a priority in certain large nations and to certain large.
00:34:24 Will Mountford
Parties does this being a financial success or a strong financial prospect give you more confidence that it could be taken forwards? Environmentalism goes beyond just saving energy or saving the trees, but it is a money making endeavor as well. It will make jobs. It will succeed economically.
00:34:44 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
At.
00:34:44 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
List for the European market that it's the one that I am focused right now.
00:34:50 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
I think that the key aspect that the technology like syrup can bring us its energy autonomy. So at the end having less consumption in the European Union means to be less dependent of other countries. So something that even if you don't care about climate change.
00:35:10 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Or if we meet or not the target of 2050 already today we decrease the dependency that we have to work.
00:35:19 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Other nations it says something positive to the current political situation and the same of making the technology compatible with circularity at the and circularity in the built environment is also a great chance to be less dependent from from other countries. So to strengthen our economy.
00:35:40 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
And have games that don't come from destruction of raw materials, but from creating new services and also new manufacturing. So there is a great potential there in that sense and in the project of siraf we have also great opportunity because we are.
00:36:00 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
In this change of paradigm of the facades, the facades are not anymore something that you install and you forget about it and maybe in 50 years or 100 years you come back and.
00:36:12 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
You demolish and you do nothing with it, but you want to keep it operating as best as possible, which means to update the control algorithms that you have there and to have that minimum monitoring also control that it's something that we accept for our heating and cooling.
00:36:33 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Devices. So now this kind of services would also be related to the facade industry and maybe.
00:36:42 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Offset from these systems that they are going to be useless or not even. Maybe for some climates one of the two because you can deal with the facade. So it's an opportunity of course of job creations and also one of the problems that maybe I didn't mention before in the construction industry, it's there.
00:37:02 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
That we don't have enough labor, so enough people working in the industry because it's a tough work and in tough conditions. So maybe some of the concepts that I presented you in the beginning, they just focus on how I can make this technology from really highly insulating to not insulating.
00:37:21 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
But then at the end it was about putting some openings in a brick wall and with siraf we are, let's say the capacity of thing off and a completely new technology, which means that can be directly aligned also with other trends in the construction industry or needs of having a product that it's industrialized that it's.
00:37:42 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Prefabricate it so that you can do it offside in a comfortable conditions and safe conditions for the workforces and all the complexities that the facade.
00:37:54 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
How his deal with in the manufacturing side and not in the construction side so that there is simple so you need also less people and you can have more control on it. So in that sense the transformation of the construction industry that we see thanks to the completely or radically new product goes also.
00:38:15 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
In this election.
00:38:22 Will Mountford
Looking back on Sarah, looking back on facades, looking back on the change needed in the construction industry, and hopefully something that's going to keep us all alive into 2050 and beyond, what would you say is the message to anyone listening to this?
00:38:37 Will Mountford
If they are working in the construction industry, or maybe if they are in policy, or maybe if they're just a member of the public who wants to know about how architecture is meeting environmental challenges.
00:38:49 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Let's say that from today's interview, I would like in general, all the citizens to reflect on how traditional construction industry and construction industry is and how reluctant we all are when it comes to innovation in the construction industry, because it's something that once that it's.
00:39:09 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
And there it's built and it's there. It lasts maybe so much that people are less likely to take risk, and usually it also takes a lot of money to have a build.
00:39:21 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
In constructed, right? So the general approach is to be really conservative. But my message today is we cannot continue like this because we are not answering even to today's problem. If we keep building like that. So maybe this approach worked 50 years ago.
00:39:42 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
100 years ago, but now we need to change so that what we are building today or how we are renovating the buildings today are effective in 25 and hopefully contributing to meet our target.
00:39:56 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
In 2050, so I would ask to everyone to be more open to innovation in the construction industry. So from the citizen that at the end needs to also accept.
00:40:08 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Seeing the buildings being built completely in a new way, so with reuse materials with facades that are able to modulate the heat that are managed, while before we're just.
00:40:20 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Speak.
00:40:21 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
And of course, to the decision makers also to policymakers to be aware of all the.
00:40:29 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Trends in the research environment so that they update and make ambitious their targets and to the to the sector in general, it's really hard to approach because construction sector is very compartmentalized. So we have many small medium enterprises. So to all of them.
00:40:49 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
My message would be the same. You cannot continue.
00:40:53 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Working like that to have a good quality building now, so please accept the challenge and be open to do things differently.
00:41:03 Will Mountford
And if people want to know more about doing things differently, and Zeraf, are there any useful websites that we can link them to now?
00:41:10 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
So to be updated about our research, you can find news about it in our project website Technology Project website. Our LinkedIn that is also Terra technology and overall eurac research.
00:41:26 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Page you can find more information there. So as soon as we have public deliverables and news, we post them in these three sources.
00:41:36 Will Mountford
Thank you so much for your time today and I look forward to hopefully having more conversations in more stable sunny weather with you sometime soon.
00:41:44 Dr Miren Juaristi Gutierrez
Thank you very much.