The majority of workers express dissatisfaction with their shared workplace design, which harms their health, wellbeing, productivity and social relations. So-called ‘adaptive’ workplace technologies try to manage these health risks by automating a wide range of architectural building services. However, there is severe lack of concrete evidence on how the short- and longer-term impact of such adaptive architectural technologies on health and wellbeing can be objectively measured, and then become benchmarked and optimized for a variety of hybrid workplace contexts. SONATA therefore aims to generate evidence-based recommendations on the use of architectural adaptation as technological intervention that can benefit human health and well-being in the workplace. Firstly, SONATA aims to measure, quantify and increase the range of health and well-being benefits of the separate and combined effects of state-of-the-art architectural adaptations on four different building shearing layers. Secondly, SONATA will generate empirical knowledge on how these multiple co-located adaptations can be intertwined together so that their health and wellbeing impact is greater than the sum of the separate layers. Lastly, SONATA investigates how these positive effects can become equitably negotiated between the varying - and often conflicting - work situations that must co-exist in a shared workplace. To ensure the resulting recommendations are feasible, easily adoptable and cost-effective to implement, SONATA will involve the pro-active participation and critical analysis from a well-considered selection of key target group representatives, such as workers, OSH-responsibilities, OEM and OHP experts, architects, workplace organisation innovators, adaptive technology manufacturers, and building certification consultants.

We will validate an affordable (28% reduction of total costs) and lightweight (35% weight reduction) solution for envelope insulation to bring existing curtain wall buildings to “nearly zero energy” standards while complying with the structural limits of the original building structure and national building codes. Two key commercial insulating products: • Highly insulating mono-component and environmentally friendly spray foam, EENSULATE foam, for the cost-effective automated manufacturing and insulation of the opaque components of curtain walls as well as for the significant reduction of thermal bridges during installation (SELENA and EVONIK in cooperation with ULSTER); • Lightweight and thin double pane vacuum glass, EENSULATE glass, for the insulation of the transparent component of curtain walls, manufactured through an innovative low temperature process using polymeric flexible adhesives and distributed getter technology, thus allowing to use both annealed and tempered glass as well as low emissivity coatings (AGC, SAES and TVITEC in cooperation with ULSTER and UNIVPM ). A multi-functional thermo-tunable coating will allow for dynamic solar gain control as well as anti-fogging and self-cleaning properties (AGC in cooperation with UCL). They will enable insulating solutions that Focchi, DAPP and Unstudio will promote with two different levels of performance: • EENSULATE Basic curtain wall modules where the thermal and acoustic insulation will be provided by the novel EENSULATE glass and EENSULATE foam in the spandrel combined with state of the art low-e coated glass; • EENSULATE Premium modules integrating the thermo-chromic coated glass with additional self-cleaning and anti-fogging functionalities. BGTEC will exploit the limited thickness and high insulating properties of the EENSULATE glass to introduce in their range innovative solutions for the fenestration challenges in historical buildings, compatible with the original window frames and sash designs.