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Advanced Building Skins
Quantitative performance requirements (product-specific, construction-specific and buildingspecific)
and descriptive/defining performance requirements
The aggregation of the fulfillment of all described functional requirements as well as
quantitative performance requirements and/or descriptive performance requirements leads to
functional qualities and technical performance characteristics of a building, in accordance with
the technical regulations e.g. [24].
In other words, "functional quality" depicts the aggregation of the degree of fulfillment of the
functional requirements. "Technical quality" reflects the degree of fulfillment of the
aggregation of the individual technical requirements.
1.4 The Construction Products Regulation
The Construction Products Regulation (305/2011/EU - CPR 1 ) – replacing the Construction Products
Directive (89/106/EEC - CPD 2 ) is laying down harmonised conditions for the marketing of
construction products. The European Parliament and the Council of the European Union adopted the
CPR on March 9th 2011. However, the main parts of its substantial articles will apply first from 1 July
2013. Until then, the CPD therefore remains in application. The already applicable parts of the CPR
focus on the notification and designation processes of the Notified Bodies (NB) and the Technical
Assessment Bodies (TAB). The CPR is to ensure reliable information on construction products in
relation to their performances, which is achieved by providing a common technical language, offering
uniform assessment methods of the performance of construction products. These methods have been
compiled in harmonized European standards (hEN) and European Assessment Documents (EAD).
This common technical language is to be applied by:
the manufacturers when declaring the performance of their products, but also by
the authorities of Member States when specifying requirements for them, and by
their users (architects, engineers, constructors…) when choosing the products most suitable
for their intended use in construction works.
One the major revisions concerns the basic requirement hygiene, health and environment and the
addition of a new basic requirement (No. 7) sustainable use of natural resources.
This means that construction works must be designed, built and demolished in such a way that the use
of natural resources is sustainable and in particular ensure the following:
a) reuse or recyclability of the construction works, their materials and parts after demolition;
b) durability of the construction works;
c) use of environmentally compatible raw and secondary materials in the construction works.
How this will be implemented e.g. in an OIB-guideline is still under discussion [21].
2 Building Certification Systems
In the past few years, an increasing number of building certification systems have been placed on the
market. Due to multi-characteristic influences in the context of sustainability assessments of buildings
a complete evaluation criteria-structure is essential. A very large number of international building
certification systems have existed since the 1990s. In the following, the two most common, LEED and
BREAM, will be briefly described. In Austria, three national certification systems currently exist,
DGNB/ÖGNI, klima:aktiv and ÖGNB (TQ-B). As regards assessment of buildings, these certification
systems implement different approaches to environmental performance, e.g. completely or partly using
LCA methodology. The differences between the three certification systems used in Austria are
described below taking into account certifications on "new construction dwellings". Apart from
already existing building certification system, reference is also made to the ongoing R&D European
projects developed under the FP7 framework European as OPEN HOUSE 3 or SuPerBuilding 4 .
1
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2011:088:0005:0043:EN:PDF
2
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:1989:040:0012:0026:EN:PDF
3
OPEN HOUSE - Benchmarking and mainstreaming building sustainability in the EU based on transparency and openness (open
source and availability) from model to implementation. http://www.openhouse-fp7.eu/
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