Towards buildings with integrated bioclimatic and energy efficiency intelligence

The ''int2'' project (towards buildings with integrated bioclimatic and energy efficiency intelligence) aims to reduce by half the primary energy consumption and the CO2 emissions of office buildings during their operational life, compared with standard new buildings today.

in2 is a pre-production project conducted jointly by a fluid engineering company and a climatic engineering company. A life-size prototype has been developed as part of the project, paving the way for the marketing phase.

The prototype developed incorporates three innovative elements:

• a multi-functional, double-skin cassette façade, designed for decentralised management and easy maintenance. This cassette façade not only meets growing expectations in terms of functionality and features (comfort, heat, noise management, natural light, etc.), but it also complies with energy consumption and CO2 emission requirements;
• a decentralised air-treatment module, built into the façade, which is based on a water loop heat pump system. This module transfers energy from areas exposed to high levels of sunlight or heat, to areas that require heating;
• a system for modelling and integrating the mechanism and its components, which manages communications with the various interfaces of the building. This enables the integration of the mechanism into a broad range of future architectural solutions.