OpenFace is a project of TU DELFT, TU Darmstadt, and Eurac Research, renowned for their contributions to façade design teaching and research. Through this cooperation, we leverage on our extensive experience in façade design and engineering education to unify current knowledge towards a material-efficient, climate-positive, and user-centred façade Industry.
TU Delft’s Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment has been researching facades for more than 20 years. The research covers topics like saving energy, sustainability, manufacturing methods like 3D printing, and user-friendly design.
Teaching façade design and engineering goes on for over 20 years, and includes the MSc course “Façade Technoledge” attended by about 80 students each year. At TU Delft many students choose to focus on façade glass design for the MSc thesis, while during the bachelor’s program, over 300 students learn about Façade Design and Engineering each year.
TU Delft has been at the forefront of digital and open education, by having already developed a very successful Massive Open Online Course for “introduction to Façade Design and Engineering”.
TU Darmstadt is one of Germany’s leading technical universities with more than than 310 professors, 4,600 academic and administrative/technical staff, 25,400 students who devote their talents and best efforts to the significant future research fields.
The Faculty of Engineering of TU Darmstadt is recognised as one of the excellence centres in Glass and Façade Engineering. Research and teaching for the past 15 years have been focusing on fundamental science and new knowledge in these fields.
Beside research, education in Façade Design and Engineering includes a wide range of topics from parametric design to the development of details, to gain insight into the most diverse parts of the building envelope. The department also hosts the world-renown Glass Competence Centre, which is used for both research and educational activities.
Eurac Research is a private research centre located in Bolzano (South Tyrol, Italy). Over 600 collaborators from over 25 countries conduct their research in 16 Institutes and research centres, addressing the greatest challenges of the future: keeping societies healthy, fostering intact environments, and developing well-functioning political and social systems and promoting sustainable energy. The research group of Energy Efficient Buildings, part of Eurac Research’s Institute for Renewable Energy, focuses on energy flexible buildings and building clusters, façade system concepts, architectural solutions for natural ventilation and daylighting, nearly zero energy buildings (NZEB) with high indoor environmental quality (IEQ).
Eurac Research is home of laboratories dedicated to façade tests. There, technicians can verify the thermal and energy performances of envelope systems, and assess under realistic operating conditions, how energy performance and quality of the indoor environment are affected by façade systems, while using different system configurations.