Post‐earthquake damage reports have continuously highlighted the significant vulnerability of nonstructural elements to seismic events. Nonstructural damage has severe impact in the building recovery, increasing the socioeconomic losses even for low intensity events. In the last few years, research efforts have focused on the development of innovative nonstructural solutions, to be combined with damage‐resistant structural skeletons in order to obtain an overall high‐performance building. As part of a European Union (EU)‐funded project, the effectiveness of such integrated skeleton&envelope low‐damage system in reducing the earthquake related losses was investigated. Tridimensional shake table tests on a 1:2 scaled timber‐concrete low‐damage structural skeleton, “dressed” by different innovative nonstructural elements (glass/concrete facades, gypsum/masonry partitions), were performed at the National Laboratory for Civil Engineering (LNEC) in Lisbon, Portugal. The shake table tests were carried out at increasing seismic intensities to investigate the structural and nonstructural performance up to a higher‐than Collapse Prevention Limit State according to the Italian Code (975 years return period). This paper focuses on the dynamic behavior of nonstructural elements with detailed discussion on construction detailing, seismic demand and performance of the innovative solutions. The high performance of nonstructural elements proved the potential of the details introduced in the partitions/facades. Minimal or no damage was observed up to the end of the overall testing sequence, which reached moderate‐to‐high interstory drift ratios (more than 1.00%) ‐ typically expected to cause severe damage to traditional nonstructural partitions/infills/facades.

Nonstructural components typically are not designed for seismic loads, yet their behavior can affect the postearthquake building functionality significantly. Nonstructural damage occurs at low to moderate seismic intensities, heavily contributing to downtime and overall financial loss. Moreover, the failure of these elements can represent a potential life-safety threat for occupants and pedestrians. Due to increased awareness of these issues, in recent decades substantial research efforts have been dedicated to the study of nonstructural seismic behavior. Focusing on architectural elements (facades, partitions, and ceilings), this paper provides a state-of-the-art review of fragility functions. Seismic damage states were described and literature data were collected to build fragility domains for different nonstructural archetypes. Furthermore, references to innovative low-damage technologies are provided, and traditional (i.e., construction practice) systems were compared with low-damage components in terms of fragility. A fragility-based direct design approach is suggested based on the state-of-the-art review: nonstructural details could be designed, manufactured, or selected specifically to target desired tailored fragility curves representing targeted (multi)performance levels.

Recent natural disasters and climate change-induced extremes emphasize the urgent need to enhance the overall resilience of society by addressing the various hazards that buildings may face. Current design approaches recognize the need for integrated risk assessments, but studies primarily focus on existing buildings and single hazards, neglecting the impact of multiple hazards and resilience quantifications. However, it is crucial to consider multi-hazard scenarios and quantify economic, environmental, and resilience losses to pursue effective solutions from the early-stage design of both new buildings and retrofitting interventions. This paper presents a practical multi-criteria approach to support design decisions for enhanced safety, sustainability, and resilience of buildings against earthquakes and heatwaves. The proposed approach is applied to a commercial building with various seismic-resistant and energy-efficient facades. Non-linear seismic assessments are conducted to predict the potential impact concerning repair costs, carbon emissions, and the resilience loss at the design-level earthquake. Additionally, a whole life-cycle analysis and dynamic energy simulations are performed to calculate the financial and carbon losses resulting from power consumption and the ability of the building to maintain energy efficiency under extreme heat. Finally, the study employs a multi-matrix decision-making approach based on integrated economic, environmental, and resilience losses to guide the design selection. The results demonstrate that earthquake-resistant facades can significantly reduce financial losses by over 50%, with seismic resilience playing a crucial role in the final decision. This approach facilitates more effective investment decisions for building projects, enabling the quantification of the effectiveness of integrated strategies in reducing overall potential losses.

When dealing with seismic risk assessment at a large scale, the collection of relevant building data is still deemed a challenging task, often leading to limited building knowledge and, consequently, high uncertainties. Therefore, innovative yet standardized frameworks and adaptive tools are needed to support the seismic risk assessment of buildings. Towards this goal, this paper proposes a simplified multi-knowledge seismic assessment methodology involving the analytical-mechanical SLaMA (Simple Lateral Mechanism Analysis) method. An ad-hoc data collection form is first developed to identify the building vulnerabilities by merging and building on existing institutional forms at the international level and integrating new input data. The data are then used to implement the SLaMA-based methodology, at different building knowledge levels, to assess the seismic safety and the economic losses of buildings. The proposed data structure and approach is planned to be included in the “Seismic-Response” module for PELL (Public Energy Living Lab)-School platform, aiming to become a standardized and interoperable database for relevant data of Italian schools and a dashboard for allowing stakeholders to continuously monitor their energetic and static/seismic conditions. The paper discusses the potential and effectiveness of the proposed procedure for large-scale applications and its integration into platforms assessing the energy efficiency of buildings.

Creating safer and more resilient building facades has become a primary concern in contemporary design, particularly in earthquake-prone regions, where there is a potentially high impact on financial, social and environmental losses. Glazed curtain wall systems are widely used in modern architecture. Yet, despite decades of research efforts aimed at enhancing the understanding of their seismic behaviour, it is not clear how design choices affect the response of glazed facades. This is crucial given the wide range of glass, framing and joint variations that are at our disposal. With a focus on unitized curtain walls, this paper provides insights into the influence of design variables on façade seismic response by means of an extensive experimental campaign and an associated parametric study to test alternative designs under both quasi-static and dynamic loading conditions. The variables considered included variations in unit dimensions, glass and joint aspect ratios, joint and framing detailing, and support conditions. This research delves into a statistical analysis of the experimental results, in order to define parameters such as glass and façade unit rotations, frame elongations and distortions, utilization factors at different intensity levels. The results provide insights that guide façade design decisions for achieving desired seismic performance levels.