Sustainable Building Materials and Thermally Efficient Designs

Dear Colleagues,

The Guest Editors are inviting submissions to a Special Issue of the journal Architecture on the subject area of “Sustainable Building Materials and Thermally Efficient Designs”. It is a well-known reality that the construction sector has a great responsibility for the depletion of energy and natural resources and in the production of waste. Innovative and more integrated solutions for contemporary buildings must be found to preserve the environment through systemic strategies aiming to reduce impacts and consumption.

The increasing high-performance energy requirements and the drive towards more adequate environmental sustainability of the entire construction sector has placed the emphasis on the possibilities offered by green buildings. The advantages of using bio-based, natural, recycled, or recyclable materials and green technologies are well known: if produced through a properly controlled and optimized supply chain, these products are non-polluting, reusable, and recyclable, and enable the design of solutions with low environmental impact and economic sustainability ensuring, at the same time, satisfactory energy performance and environmental comfort.

The transition to more sustainable building materials and technologies needs to be pursued in the production phase (using low-embodied-energy base materials, such as biobased or recycled materials, according to a circular economy approach, and sustainable production processes), strategic phase (designing bioclimatic and highly energy-efficient buildings using both passive and active strategies), construction phase (promoting the use of low-energy-demanding construction technologies), use phase (through the optimization of thermal and energy performance of both new and existing buildings toward the minimization of energy needs), and end-life phases (developing zero-waste and low-carbon-footprint materials, technologies, and processes).

In this regard, this Special Issue aims to address several topics associated with the concept of sustainability and thermal efficiency in buildings, by exploring different aspects concerning building materials, construction technologies, production chains, process control, hygrothermal and energy performance, and indoor thermal comfort of the built environment.

The presentation of comprehensive literature reviews, case studies, and the development of new design and methodological approaches, based on experimental measurements and building energy analysis, are greatly encouraged.

Topics of interest for publication include, but are not limited to:

• Innovative and emerging bio-based, recycled, and waste-based building materials;
• Improvements in the mechanical, physical, and thermal performance of building materials;
• Durability of bio-based building materials;
• Development of composite bio-based materials enhancing one or several physical properties;
• Development of innovative instruments to assess the physical properties of bio-based materials;
• Circular economy strategies for building sustainability;
• LCA and LCC of sustainable building materials and technologies;
• Innovative technologies for low-energy buildings;
• Eco-designs and bioclimatic approaches for buildings;
• Green building designs and construction processes;
• Technical synergic solutions for improving thermal inertia, indoor thermal comfort, and energy performance of massive and lightweight existing buildings;
• Active and passive strategies for designing highly energy-efficient buildings;
• Zero-energy buildings and passive houses;
• Novel approaches to sustainable production and building construction;
• Innovative procedures to assess building and construction materials’ sustainability;
• Sustainability and process control.

Dr. Giada Giuffrida
Dr. Hamza Allam
Dr. Rosa Giuseppina Caponetto
Dr. Francesco Nocera
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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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. Architecture is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly 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 1200 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.