Your mother always advised you to dress in layers. Who knew that her advice would be relevant to your career in construction and architecture?

Karol Kazmierczak, a building facade consultant, suggests utilizing a system of layering when designing facade interfaces. His goal is to ensure the continuity of layers across all parts of the building.

His recommended layers include:

• Weather screen
• Vapor-permeable waterproofing
• Vapor-impermeable waterproofing
• Thermal insulation
• Smoke insulation
• Vapor barrier
• Air seal
• Any special layers required for the job such as bullet resistance, burglar resistance, or blast resistance

Kazmierczak stresses that it’s important to remember the functions that are performed by a particular material to avoid common mistakes such as placing insulation below the bottom mullion and above the top mullion, causing condensation to build inside the vapor barrier.

He offers a multitude of tips, scenarios, and images in his detailed explanation of this layering technique in the original PDF found on his website.