Given the global challenges arising from climate change, relevant, promising methods to expedite the energy transition are essential. The integration of solar cooling technologies into façades represents an important option. Potential benefits of applying solar cooling technologies include conserving primary and conventional electricity sources, lowering peak energy demand to achieve cost savings, and offering environmental benefits. This study aimed to support the design team and stakeholders involved at the design and development stages with a framework that supports developing solar cooling integrated façades. This study adopted a participatory research methodology to identify, outline, and validate key decisions, information, and stakeholders supporting product design and development. The key study findings revealed that the integration of solar cooling technologies into façades should be considered at the conception stage, where the client, climate designer, building physicists, building service consultants, and architects were identified as key participants who should be involved in the decision-making process. The most critical information identified for supporting design decisions includes technology costs, performance and efficiency, cooling demand, and construction characteristics of the thermal envelope.

Building energy performance is largely determined during the early conceptual design stages. However, energy evaluation is often postponed until after key architectural decisions—such as massing and façade configuration—have been finalized, limiting opportunities for meaningful optimization. This study addresses this gap by demonstrating a Building Information Modeling (BIM)-based comparative approach for integrating energy analysis into early design stages. Focusing on residential villas in Abu Dhabi, UAE, three residential forms were selected for testing: compact, L-shaped, and U-shaped designs. Each form included multiple iterations representing the design progression process, namely the base building form, façade refinement (glazing and shading adjustments), and spatial layout and/or orientation adjustments. The analysis incorporated variations in glazing ratio and building orientation to evaluate their combined impact on Energy Use Intensity (EUI). Among the tested options, the L-shaped configuration achieved the lowest EUI (79 kWh/m²), representing the best-performing option, followed by the compact (81 kWh/m²) and U-shaped (82 kWh/m²) configurations. The results also confirm that orientation remains an important factor even after façade refinement. Overall, the findings suggest that BIM-based energy analysis is most effective when applied early as a comparative and iterative design-support tool.