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Illinois Institute of Technology Associate Teaching Professor Edoarda Corradi Dell’Acqua and Professor of Civil and Architectural Engineering Jamshid Mohammadi, together with Paul V. Galvin Library, have received funding from the Illinois State Library/Secretary of State Open Educational Resources (OER) Grant to write an open textbook on building facade maintenance.

The exterior of a building is called its facade. A number of catastrophic building facade failures in recent years, such as the in March 2024, have brought attention to the need for improved methods in facade evaluation and maintenance, particularly in medium to high-rise buildings.

Mohammadi and Corradi Dell’Acqua collaborate on a building envelope rehabilitation graduate course and have noticed a stark lack of resources available for guiding their students in learning, many of whom are industry professionals.

“A lot of professionals who are involved in building facade inspection climb up scaffolds and do visual inspections, but we noticed that they really don’t have much in terms of directions. Of course, there are some municipal requirements, but a lot of times these are just subjective evaluations without much detailed technical analysis,” says Mohammadi. “The idea of this course and this textbook is to put a more scientific tune to the process.”

They will spend the next couple of years developing the textbook, will test it out in the course, and will make the book available to the public on a Creative Commons license. Not only will the book be freely available—to students at Illinois Tech and other universities, to industry professionals, to legislators and regulators—but it will also be something of a living resource that can be adapted and updated over time.

“For example, an engineer who works with glass facades could add materials related to that expertise,” says Corradi Dell’Acqua. “Hopefully the Creative Commons license will not only generate more resources but also more research in this area.”

Corradi Dell’Acqua, who has been working on another OER project developing educational material on technical drawing including virtual and augmented reality resources for students who are learning engineering graphics, will be applying that expertise to this project as well, developing illustrations and virtual reality/augmented reality resources that make it easier to understand what’s happening in areas that are harder to see directly, such as behind the facade.

“Facades are always becoming more complex systems,” says Corradi Dell’Acqua. “There is not much reliable information on building facade inspection so we hope this resource can be helpful to different audiences.”

Mohammadi and Corradi Dell’Acqua will be collaborating on the project with Paul V. Galvin Library staff Stephanie Fletcher, head of discovery, metadata, and technical services, and Charles Uth (CE ’81, M.S. CE ’85), head of STEM/senior engineering librarian. Soliman Khudeira (Ph.D. CE ’99) and Bora Jang (Ph.D. CE ’18) will serve as subject matter experts.

Image: Illustration of building facades (Credit: Edoarda Corradi Dell’Acqua)