Architecture inspirations of modern office buildings draw from new material and construction solution or from philosophical aspects of human living. During last decades there were a lot of trends in building market derive from fashionable mottos e.g.: solar, green, environmental friendly, sustainable, low-energy, zero-net or plusenergy architecture. However, most of the existing office buildings were often design without previous analysis and final effect was worse than it was expected. The presented study was devoted to developed an external wall system dedicated for zeroenergy office building. Initial analyses start with architecture and ergonomic considerations taking into account different construction of building elements and it is topology. The second step of analysis determined minimum and maximum window size based on results obtained from daylighting simulation. Thermal analysis using transient heat conduction method show the energy balance of the wall and adjacent zone. Finally, the potential of solar energy as a source of heat and electricity were estimated for assumed configurations and PV – glass ratio. In the second part of the analysis the seasonal and annual energy balance for single components were estimated numerically using ESP-r software. The following component types were considered: opaque – glass and PV or transparent – single or double skin. Based on the obtained results authors proposed a function of energy flux versus number of panels. The functions show that some of the components have a positive energy balance and could be apply to achieve effect of zero or even plus energy façade. The final optimized solution of the façade system will be design and construct at one of the university building within the framework of German-Polish Energy Efficiency Project.
