Adaptive building envelope systems can manage energy and mass transformation between indoor and outdoor environments, which contributes to the achievement of environmental benefits via reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emission while maintaining human comfort and well-being. However, the market penetration of adaptive façades (AFs) is far from sufficient, even though their capabilities have been recognized in research. Hence, this paper explores the factors hindering the growth of the market share of AFs, based on an exhaustive examination of designs, evaluation criteria and tools, and control systems. Insufficient commercial technology, inaccurate and incomplete performance data, and inconsistent evaluation criteria are demonstrated to be the factors that have hindered the widespread utilization of AFs thus far. Future research tendencies, including reducing costs, retrofitting existing building façades, developing building performance measurement tools, and building consensus evaluation criteria that favor the wide applicability of such façades in actual practice are identified.

Population growth and urban expansion have led to increased demand for buildings. Optimizing the building façade design, using integrated photovoltaic (PV) shading and vertical farming (VF) can reduce building energy consumption while ensuring a partial food supply. However, the importance and prevalence of productive façades have not received significant attention. Furthermore, few studies have focused on the impact of productive façades on both indoor and outdoor environmental qualities. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the potential of integrating productive façades with residential façades in high-density cities. A typical community in Guangzhou, China was investigated. Thermal comfort, light comfort, electricity production, and crop yield were considered, and the optimal façade configuration was chosen from the established 146-model library. The integrated module can effectively improve the indoor lighting and thermal comfort of residential buildings. The module also mitigates the outdoor thermal environment to a certain extent, meeting 6.3–10.3% and 7.6–9.6% of the annual electricity and vegetable demands, respectively, in residential communities. This study can guide other densely populated cities with subtropical climates to advance the research and construction of productive façades, improving occupant comfort, reducing energy consumption, and mitigating food security and urban climate change issues.