Research

The Chair of Building Physics focusses on the understanding of the urban climate at different scales from building, neighborhood to city scale, the origin of local urban heat islands and the forces driving heat, air and moisture transfer and to propose mitigation measures improving such sustainable living conditions as health and well-being of their inhabitants, as well as reducing building energy use.

We develop multiscale urban climate models coupling main physical phenomena and link them to urban distributed multi-energy systems including renewable energy and energy storage. These concepts are developed for a changing urban environment and climate, taking into account the behavior of their occupants. Our approach encompasses multiscale observations ranging from the nanoscale of materials to the macroscale of buildings and city quarters.

Our research focuses on:

• Creating multiscale models that integrate the urban climate and energy systems at the building, city quarter and urban scales.
• Developing and evaluating urban mitigation measures, including vegetation and new urban retrofit scenarios taking into account local urban heat island effects and climatic change.
• Engineering new urban materials and solutions, and analyzing their physical, mechanical, and chemical behavior.

Research Areas