Post-Grenfell, the fire safety agenda puts the focus on facade design. Sandra Rubiano of AESG says recladding is a chance to improve sustainability, and overall liveability, and go beyond compliance.

In recent years, the post-Grenfell regulatory landscape has rightly placed fire safety as the primary driver for the design of facades within the social housing sector.

Likewise, with the introduction of the Building Safety Act reshaping the facade landscape – and particularly for residential buildings over 18 metres – there’s greater accountability on building owners and a more rigorous approach to managing fire risks required.

While safety remains the essential starting point, there is now a growing expectation that housing providers go further, addressing energy efficiency, embodied carbon and aesthetics in parallel. This presents both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge lies in balancing the often-competing demands of cost, regulation and architectural integrity, particularly when retrofitting existing buildings. The opportunity, however, is in delivering facade solutions that are not only compliant but genuinely transformational.

Learning from global best practice

Countries like Denmark and Germany provide clear evidence of what is possible when facade design is elevated ‘beyond compliance.’ In Denmark, there is a national culture of resource-conscious design, where durability, material efficiency and lifecycle performance are embedded into every stage of development. Germany, meanwhile, pioneered the Passivhaus standard, a model for ultra-low-energy buildings that rely heavily on high-performance facades to achieve their efficiency.

These international examples show that innovation in facades can unlock measurable improvements not just in energy performance but in resident comfort, building resilience and long-term maintenance costs. They also demonstrate the value of viewing facades as holistic systems – not a collection of parts but a key interface between people, buildings and the environment.

Decarbonisation & the net zero opportunity

With decarbonisation now a strategic priority for the UK housing sector, retrofitting facades has the potential to become a cornerstone of a provider’s net zero strategy. In fact, facade performance can make or break the energy profile of a building, particularly in older social housing stock where thermal bridging and inadequate insulation are common.

Today’s modelling tools can forecast how various facade upgrades will affect seasonal energy use, highlight opportunities to reduce embodied carbon, and even assess circularity through end-of-life planning. These capabilities should be seen not as extras, but as essential tools for designing buildings that are truly future-ready.

A new generation of facade systems also supports this ambition. Materials with improved fire resistance and lower embodied carbon, prefabricated panels that minimise on-site disruption, and smart detailing that optimises performance are all making sustainable upgrades more accessible. By embracing such systems, and going beyond minimum standards, housing providers can deliver facades that are not only compliant but also maintainable, futureproof and aligned to broader climate goals.

Putting residents at the centre

With the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023 also emphasising resident engagement, transparent communication is critical in any recladding project.

Residents need to understand not just what is changing but why and how it will benefit them in the long term. A well-considered facade upgrade can reduce energy bills, improve thermal comfort, and significantly reduce a building’s environmental impact. Those outcomes need to be part of the conversation from the outset. Thermal modelling tools can also help bring those benefits to life, offering tangible evidence of improvements and making technical design decisions more relatable.

Setting a new standard

Facade retrofit should not be viewed solely as a safety obligation. It’s an opportunity to set new standards for building performance, sustainability and resident engagement. The most successful projects will come from integrated, multidisciplinary thinking, where fire safety, energy efficiency, architectural expression and long-term resilience are considered together, not in isolation.

With the right tools and expertise already in place, the opportunity is clear: to retrofit not just for compliance, but for climate, comfort, and community. If we draw together international best practices and align them with the UK’s unique housing challenges, we can redefine what facade retrofit looks like: not just making buildings safer but making them better in every sense.

Sandra Rubiano is associate director of facades at AESG