Addressing Sustainable Building Design: Combining Energy and Structural Optimization

Dear Colleagues,

It is well-known that most existing buildings were constructed without any seismic provisions, in an era in which energy efficiency and environmental sustainability requirements were not a critical part of the design. Consequently, over the last few decades, innovative retrofit techniques for existing buildings as well as the design of new high-performance building components and systems have progressively attracted the interest of the scientific community and government institutions. Their effective implementation requires a proper and optimized building design, which is fundamental to promoting a sustainable and safe built environment for future generations. In addition, new technologies enabled by Industry 4.0 (e.g., additive manufacturing) as well as advanced mathematical approaches (e.g., topology optimization) have the potential to provide efficient solutions for the design of building envelope components with enhanced thermal and structural behavior and, at the same time, characterized by a sustainable use of resources.

Within this frame, this Special Issue proposes a journey through different methodological approaches to address building design optimization combining multiple aspects (i.e., energy, sustainability and structural performances); thus, we invite contributions dealing with:

• Methodological papers and case studies concerning the optimization of building design integrating energy and structural aspects/techniques;
• Numerical and experimental studies addressing physical and mechanical interactions between energy-efficiency measures and building components’ structural behavior;
• Numerical and experimental studies addressing digital fabrication to develop new building envelope components with enhanced thermal and structural behavior.

We welcome the submission of original papers related to the above topics as well as those that deal generally with methodologies, numerical and experimental investigations, and case studies addressing building design.

Thank you for your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Gerardo Maria Mauro
Dr. Costantino Menna
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Buildings is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• energy structural optimization
• building envelope
• building energy efficiency
• sustainable design
• seismic design
• structural performance
• safe built environment
• digital fabrication
• additive manufacturing
• topology optimization