On December 8-11, 2025, the Buildings XVI Conference will bring together product manufacturers, research organizations, academia, builders, designers, architects and consultants to discuss their work achievements, interest and awareness of buildings issues, and to provide solutions and insight into some of our major building envelope problems.
The conference, organized by ASHRAE and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, takes place every three years allowing time to develop new research and technology applications and to document findings.
This year’s conference, themed Thermal Performance of the Exterior Envelopes of Whole Buildings, includes three tracks focused on Principles (research and development), Practices (applications and case studies) and Residential Buildings.
Buildings XVI Conference Technical Program:
- Adaptation to a changing climate
- Advanced building construction, modular and offsite manufacturing
- Air barriers and air leakage
- Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) applications in building envelope and whole-building design and operation
- Building decarbonization and lifecycle impacts including embodied carbon
- Building envelope commissioning
- Building/grid interaction
- Building retrofits and weatherization
- Building sustainability, passive survivability, circular construction, and resilience
- Cost performance optimization
- Design tools
- Dynamic and high-R windows and attachments
- Dynamic (smart) and passive roofs, attics, walls, basements/below-grade construction, and integrated technologies
- Heat and moisture transfer in materials and assemblies
- Heritage/historic buildings
- HVAC-envelope integration
- Insulation and bio-based solutions
- Mass timber construction and other innovative materials and systems
- Moisture management, durability, and service life
- Monitoring, modeling, and simulation, including micro-climates and boundary conditions
- Standards, new energy codes, guidelines, and test procedure development
- Thermal energy storage including thermal mass and phase change materials
- Whole building performance including thermal bridging
Additional topics for the Residential single and multifamily buildings track include:
- Indoor environmental quality including air cleaning, daylighting, emissions from building materials, overheating, kitchen exhaust, and ventilation
- Sustainability certification programs
- Smart buildings
- Urban heat islands and urban physics
