Envelope checklist

This article – the winning entry to the IStructE Research into Practice case study competition in 2025 – describes research and development undertaken for design of the four facade towers for the Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona.

This article examines issues which affect the design of masonry support systems in a number of common scenarios.

This technical lecture explored innovative permanent design solutions that can be adopted to improve buildability and reduce carbon intensive temporary works within facade retention schemes.

This article introduces the idea of a ‘carbon payback period’ as a metric for assessing the net carbon emissions of design decisions whose scope spans both the embodied and operational carbon.

Lessons learned from the collapse of a new footbridge over a live highway during construction, resulting in a tragic loss of life.

Discover the design principles, performance, and material selection in contemporary building envelopes.