PhD Position Natural Building Skins Heat Resilience

Join us in developing the next generation of climate-resilient building envelopes.

As a PhD candidate at TU Delft, you will explore how nature-based building skins can transform existing homes into healthier, cooler and more sustainable living environments. Working at the intersection of building physics, architecture, ecology and user-centered design, you will develop innovative façade solutions that combine vegetation, circular materials and smart ventilation strategies to improve indoor comfort without relying on energy-intensive cooling systems.

This is a unique opportunity to contribute to one of the most pressing challenges facing cities today: adapting existing housing to climate change while enhancing biodiversity and quality of life. Your work will move beyond theory. Through co-creation with residents and industry partners, full-scale prototyping and real-world testing, you will help bring innovative solutions from concept to demonstration.

While green façades and other nature-based solutions have demonstrated their potential to reduce surface temperatures and improve urban microclimates, limited knowledge exists on how integrated nature-based building skins can simultaneously deliver indoor heat resilience, ventilation performance, biodiversity enhancement, circularity and long-term user acceptance within affordable retrofit solutions for existing housing. As a PhD candidate at TU Delft, you will conduct research within the NWO-funded Nature 4 Homes project.

Your research will focus on developing and demonstrating natural building skins for the heat‑resilient retrofit of existing dwellings. The ambition is to create an affordable and easy‑to‑install building‑envelope solution that integrates nature‑based solutions and passive cooling strategies to mitigate overheating and regulate indoor conditions, while supporting biodiversity and circular renovation.

We are looking for a curious and motivated researcher who is excited to combine experimentation, design and stakeholder engagement. In return, you will join a collaborative and supportive research environment where independent thinking, creativity and interdisciplinary collaboration are encouraged.

At TU Delft, you will have access to world‑class research facilities, international networks and the opportunity to work on solutions with direct relevance to society and the built environment sector.

Your research will combine co‑creation, prototyping, experimental testing and modelling. Together with residents, manufacturers and other stakeholders, you will identify user‑acceptance, maintenance and practical barriers affecting the design, installation and operation of natural building skins and translate these into design requirements. Successive prototypes will be developed and tested at MATELab, TU Delft’s outdoor full‑scale façade testing facility, under real weather conditions to assess heat resilience, ventilation, heat and moisture transfer, and indoor environmental performance.

The developed prototype systems will be evaluated through circular‑design principles, considering material efficiency, adaptability, reuse potential and life‑cycle environmental impacts. Experiments may also involve users to investigate comfort, interaction and acceptance, while numerical simulations will extend the experimental findings across different building and climate conditions.

You will join the Architectural Engineering + Technology (AE&T) Department at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment and the Department of Materials, Mechanics, Management and Design, at the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, TU Delft. You will work under the supervision of Marc Ottelé,…