The 4th Industrial Revolution Brings a Change in the Design Paradigm for New and Retrofitted Buildings †

The Fourth Industrial Revolution forms a smart grid with diverse sources of energy through the interconnectivity of data. Buildings that were previously the biggest users of energy are now becoming energy producers. Yet, buildings are also continually changing. The ecological definition of buildings, in addition to the building itself, includes solar panels and geothermal energy storage. The need for decarbonization and energy-efficiency brought about the implementation of heat pumps in buildings. The most economic type of heat pump is a water-sourced heat pump with hot and cold tanks or a connection to the District Energy System. Monitoring using building automatics allows HVAC optimization in the occupancy stage. Until the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the EU and the US differed in their air handling methodology, but the pandemic showed the limitations of both approaches and led to the creation of a new, integrated approach. These new ventilation systems, based on filtration instead of dilution, come together with decarbonization and the demand for new and retrofitted buildings to be smart, have zero emissions and excellent indoor environments, and be affordable. To fulfill these conditions, design teams must extrapolate experience with passive houses and introduce expertise in building automatic controls (BAC). The authors analyze the heating cooling and ventilation aspects of dwellings in a technology called Ecological Thermo-Active (ETA) technology that can also be applied to the interior retrofitting of buildings, including those with historic facades. The building “with classic form and ultramodern function” is an example of this changing design paradigm.