---
title: "Ventilated façades: a transformation of performance and aesthetics"
description: The facade of a building plays a very important role in the entire building organization. Find out why by reading our article!
image: https://blog.mannigroup.com/hubfs/Facciate%20ventilate%20metamorfosi%20prestazionale%20ed%20estetica%20-%20Manni%20Group.webp
---
[](https://blog.mannigroup.com/en)
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## ARTICLES
# Ventilated façades: transformation of performance and aesthetics
[Dry construction](https://blog.mannigroup.com/en/tag/dry-construction)
### Ventilated façades: a transformation of performance and aesthetics
A building’s façade plays a very important role in the entire construction organism. It defines the border between the layers or the innermost membranes and the outdoor environment with all its climatic forces: wind, ice, sun, etc.
All of the historical "traditional" stock built with wet construction, both load-bearing masonry and clay-cement monumental stock, requires the final "skin" to be integral and bonded, plaster or ceramic or stone cladding, to the underlying infill substrates.
This involves inevitable limitations over time, also considering the significant **thermo-hygrometric stresses**, which lead to various types of problems: detaching, infiltration, cracking and so on.
## Dry layered construction technologies: how they act on ventilated facades
The **dry stratified construction** technologies, based on mechanically fastened products and systems, offer a significant technical alternative to avoid these problems and the final facade actually becomes "**ventilated**" as it combines the layers with a moving air gap.
In summer and in mid-seasons, this "**dynamic layer**" takes advantage of the **chimney effect** (drawing air from the bottom upwards) and reduces the heat input from the outside to the inside during hot periods
On new buildings it goes without saying that a correct stratigraphy, able to isolate and phase out/attenuate the thermal wave, can be completed towards the outside with a ventilated facade, whether it **aesthetically expresses the technological elements** or **is mimetic** (think of ventilated facades with Portland cement panels of low thickness and thin plasters, such as Aquapanel Knauf).
However, the real challenge today concerns the existing stock, especially from the 1960s/70s onwards, clay-cement and which often shows deficiencies in thermal insulation and problems of durability of the plasters as well as of the bonded cladding which are, in fact, at the point of requiring major maintenance.
Here the integrated systems, composed of **insulating panels** (including sandwich), with support elements capable of bearing different types of final claddings, give the designer and customer the freedom of **any aesthetic choice** and they offer **energy and sustainability performances** (in harmony with the CAMs and in perfect accordance with the current incentives linked to government Super Bonuses).
Generally, a ventilated facade is more thermodynamically efficient the larger the **insulating thickness** behind the cavity and the lighter the final cladding layer (for example a finishing metal sheet).
These technical choices, which require an accurate design and definition of the structural anchors of these new stratigraphies, make it possible to **redefine** the very **aesthetics** of our cities, especially of the historical stock that has no artistic-monumental value yet represents most of our urban agglomerations outside the prestigious historical centres.
A **"centrifugal" strategy** therefore, which makes us look all the way to the suburbs, which Renzo Piano defines as "the heritage of humanity", where the **technological** and **performance retrofitting of the facades**(facilitated by the current post-seismic and post-Covid19 regulations) becomes the first step in a necessary improvement of the places where we live and in energy performance.
Years ago in Germany, with the reunification between East and West, they chose to invest heavily in the strategy of **recovering the buildings** (many council houses) of the former communist block and did so by implementing **insulating stratigraphies** and **ventilated facades**, where the colour choices and materials were very important to giving **new life** to stock of little value.
It is as if we were to imagine a new technological "palimpsest", as in the glorious past of historic Italian buildings, contemporary and multi-valued: energy-related, sustainable, with dry construction, possibly reversible and even aesthetically valid.
### Written by
##### [Marco Imperadori](https://blog.mannigroup.com/en/author/marco-imperadori)
Full Professor of Building Production, chair professor of Design and Technological Innovation, Acting Chancellor for the Far East Polytechnic University of Milan. Member of the sustainability commission of the Steel Promotion Foundation - (Photo by A. Avezzù)
[Visit the author's page](https://blog.mannigroup.com/en/author/marco-imperadori)
### You might be interested in
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[Building the Future: The Impact of New Technologies on Off-Site Construction](https://blog.mannigroup.com/en/building-the-future-the-impact-of-new-technologies-on-off-site-construction?hsLang=en)
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#### Topics
- [Dry construction (31)](https://blog.mannigroup.com/en/tag/dry-construction)
- [YACademy & competitions (26)](https://blog.mannigroup.com/en/tag/yacademy-competitions)
- [Sandwich Panel (20)](https://blog.mannigroup.com/en/tag/sandwich-panel)
- [Certifications (9)](https://blog.mannigroup.com/en/tag/certifications)
- [Cold Chain (9)](https://blog.mannigroup.com/en/tag/cold-chain)
- [Roofs (8)](https://blog.mannigroup.com/en/tag/roofs)
- [Thermal insulation (8)](https://blog.mannigroup.com/en/tag/thermal-insulation)
- [Façades (6)](https://blog.mannigroup.com/en/tag/façades)
- [Manni Green Tech (5)](https://blog.mannigroup.com/en/tag/manni-green-tech)
- [Leaf (3)](https://blog.mannigroup.com/en/tag/leaf)
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