Abstract

The external building envelope as the outermost part of the building plays the main role in creation the comfort conditions (visual, sound and thermal comfort) for their users. The thermal performance as a main function of the external envelope is very important in high energy consumption buildings. The development of tall buildings in the past decade uses a wide range of energy sources because of high user density in a limited area. Therefore, external envelopes of tall buildings should be designed for appropriate thermal performance and reduction of the total energy demand. In the first part of this paper, the external envelope types, functions and its thermal performance has been evaluated. Then the main components of the envelope that are affective on the thermal preference of external envelope are expressed in order of priority. In the next part, tall building, the need for its use and its role in terms of energy consumption has been introduced shortly. This paper has tried to analyze the tall building envelope structure and represent the envelope specifications as a design pattern to provide a low energy tall building with an appropriate thermal performance.