Solar-Responsive Building Envelopes for Climate-Resilient Urban Development

Solar energy and solar radiation are fundamental drivers of building energy demand, indoor thermal comfort, urban overheating, and the performance of climate-responsive building envelopes. In dense urban areas, the careful management, integration, conversion, and storage of solar energy can reduce heating and cooling loads, support renewable-energy generation, improve indoor environmental quality, and strengthen resilience to heatwaves and changing climate conditions. Solar-responsive envelope technologies including building-integrated photovoltaics, photovoltaic-thermal systems, solar-thermal components, solar-control systems, reflective and cool surfaces, ventilated façades and roofs, phase-change materials, radiative cooling, and solar-assisted thermal systems can support low-carbon urban development. However, their performance depends on complex interactions among solar radiation, shading, heat and moisture transfer, airflow, material properties, façade configuration, occupant behaviour, and local urban microclimates.This Research Topic aims to advance the design, modelling, evaluation, and application of solar-responsive and solar-integrated building-envelope technologies for sustainable, low-carbon, and climate-resilient cities. It will examine how solar energy can be managed, converted, stored, and integrated into building envelopes to improve thermal performance, indoor comfort, energy efficiency, renewable-energy generation, and resilience under present and future climate conditions. Contributions may address numerical modelling of solar radiation, heat transfer, airflow, moisture transport, and building-energy performance; building-integrated photovoltaics, photovoltaic-thermal systems, solar-thermal envelope components, solar-assisted heat pumps, and solar cooling; solar-control technologies, shading, reflective and cool surfaces, solar access, and radiation management; ventilated façades, double-skin façades, solar chimneys, solar-responsive roofs, phase-change materials, and thermal storage; and building–microclimate coupling, urban solar potential, solar cadastres, and district-scale energy performance.The Research Topic also welcomes experimental testing, field monitoring, model validation, uncertainty quantification, design optimisation, and data-driven modelling. Research may examine climate-change impacts, overheating mitigation, hygrothermal safety, condensation, durability, degradation, retrofit applications, life-cycle performance, techno-economic assessment, building codes, solar-access planning, urban heat mitigation, district energy systems, and design guidance for residential, commercial, and mixed-use buildings. Studies that connect component-scale technologies with whole-building and urban-scale outcomes are particularly encouraged.The Research Topic focuses on building-envelope systems that directly manage, use, convert, store, or respond to solar energy and solar radiation. Studies of general building-envelope performance without a specific connection to solar energy, solar-responsive design, or urban solar applications are outside the primary scope. We welcome quantitative, experimental, numerical, review, methodological, technology, policy, and practice-based contributions from researchers, designers, engineers, urban planners, policymakers, and industry stakeholders. By connecting advanced modelling with experimental evidence and real-world urban applications, this Research Topic seeks to support practical solar-energy solutions for more efficient, comfortable, resilient, and sustainable cities. Topic editors: Hamed H. Saber, Balázs Nagy, Samuel V Glass, Fitsum Tariku, Mehdi Ghobadi Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/86828/solar-responsive-building-envelopes-for-climate-resilient-urban-development