Research Meets the Industry 3 | ‘Human Interaction’
Moderator: Christian Louter
Thermal comfort is essential for occupant well-being and productivity but also a major driver of energy consumption. The HEAT FACE project—developed in collaboration with Pilkington, Orange Climate, and TU Delft—explores a novel radiant glazing solution with integrated solar control to enhance personalized thermal comfort while reducing energy use. By focusing on occupant-body heating rather than whole-space conditioning, the project investigates how users experience heated facades and aims to develop evidence-based design guidelines for renovation and upscaling. The system is installed and tested in TU Delft’s novel MATELab, a state-of-the-art facility for human-façade interaction studies. Project activities include comfort testing, life cycle assessments, and stakeholder engagement to identify barriers and opportunities. HEAT FACE redefines facades as active Personalized Environmental Control Systems (PECS), contributing to climate adaptation, user-centered design, and healthier indoor environments.
Project 3: ‘Human Interaction’ by Pilkington in collaboration with TU Delft.
Speaker project 3:
Alessandra Luna Navarro – Assistant Professor TU Delft, Building Impulse co-founder
Alessandra Luna Navarro is an Assistant Professor in the Architectural Façades and Products Research Group at TU Delft, where her research focuses on human-building interaction to advance climate resilience, resource efficiency, human well-being, and health.
Her interdisciplinary research integrates architecture, energy, and behavioral sciences, focusing on innovative building systems and façade design. She leads MATELab and SMARTLab at TU Delft, where she supervises PhD candidates conducting experiments in building design and controls. She is currently involved in the Horizon Europe funded project Smarteestory and Multicare.
She collaborates with regional energy policy makers, the EBC Annex activities at the International Energy Agency (Annex 87, Annex 95) and CIBSE (TM68) in linking evidence and innovation to policy.
Recently she was visiting scholar at UC Berkeley (funded by the Blanceflor fellowship) and Politecnico di Milano to work on heat resilience, and she was awarded with the Best Young Researcher Award at the 9thInternational Building Physics conference.
She has a Masters’ degree in Building Engineering and Architecture from La Sapienza University of Rome and an MPhil in Energy Technologies from the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge. She has also obtained a PhD from the University of Cambridge by researching occupant-centred design and operation of facades. Her research was awarded with the Future Cities Fellowship at the University of Cambridge and funded by Arup, Permasteelisa and EPSRC.
Marcel Ribberink – Business Development Manager, Pilkington Netherlands
Marcel Ribberink is the Business Development Manager at Pilkington Netherlands, specializing in the development of insulated glass solutions. With a strong focus on innovation, he is actively involved in pioneering technologies such as heated glass, dynamic solar control, and photovoltaic (PV) applications.
His work is driven by key principles including scalability, reliability, efficiency, return on investment (ROI), and CO₂ reduction. A significant part of his mission is to integrate these advancements into smart home automation concepts, ensuring seamless adaptation to modern building technologies.
Marcel collaborates closely with the Pilkington R&D and TAS teams across Europe, aligning research and product development with real-world applications. He also participates in scientific programs and collaborative projects with other business partners, universities, knowledge centers, and research institutions, contributing to sustainable concepts and parallelization strategies.
Through his expertise and dedication, Marcel plays a role in shaping the future of high-performance glazing solutions, reinforcing Pilkington’s position as a leader in sustainable and intelligent glass technologies.
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