Introduction

A building’s envelope regulates its thermodynamic system. One of the most effective ways of reduce the energy consumption of a building is to optimise its envelope. Experimental research, in which technological- environmental considerations play a leading role, has registered some intriguing advances in past decades in the development of a new adaptive-selective role for building envelopes, the goal being to arrive at an envelope capable of interfacing with its own surrounding environment, so as to formulate, from the resulting interactions, responses suited to the dynamics of the climate factors encountered in a given day or year, thus ensuring optimal quality of living while guaranteeing elevated levels of wellbeing for all users, in terms of temperature, luminosity, air quality and noise, all this with levels of energy consumption that are limited, and actually trending towards negative.