Karolina Prusicka, a CIBSE Graduate member, is a graduate of the University of Sheffield and now a Graduate Sustainability and Physics Engineer at Buro Happold, recently represented CIBSE in the REHVA Student Competition at the CLIMA 2025 conference in Milan.
Her entry, based on her final-year degree project, investigated how façade design influences both embodied and operational carbon in high-rise residential buildings, particularly under future UK climate projections and grid decarbonisation scenarios. Using a parametric model and multi-objective optimisation, the study analysed over 600 façade configurations by varying glazing type, insulation levels, cladding materials, window dimensions and shading strategies.
The study concluded that optimising façade design for future performance requires a careful balance between embodied carbon and operational carbon. Selecting low-embodied-carbon materials and appropriately sizing glazing were found to be key strategies for reducing whole-life emissions.
Karolina was one of 13 finalists from across Europe competing for the coveted prize. The competition was won by Beniamino Fambri of Italy, who presented a paper on detecting and diagnosing faults in water-to-water heat pumps using artificial neural networks.