Façades and summer performance of buildings

External cooling loads of a building façade are caused mainly by shortwave irradiance transmission, but also secondary heat flows from the internal glass panes and through ventilation gains from the façade. In a double façade with sun-blinds in the air gap, thermal energy is produced through absorption on the blinds. The work quantifies the thermal performance of single and double façades under summer conditions using laboratory and full scale building experiments. The experimental results were used for model validation and parameter studies were done using dynamic building simulation tools.