Methods and functional elements for enhanced thermal management of predominantly enclosed spaces to enable the construction of buildings with reduced power requirements for heating and/or air-conditioning systems.
The methods may be in part based on dynamically changing functional elements with variable properties, or effective properties, in terms of their electromagnetic radiative behavior and/or their thermal energy storage properties, or the spatial distribution of the stored thermal energy, which permits the application of methods to control the overall thermal behavior of the entire structure in such a way that desired levels of inside temperature can be reached with reduced consumption of external energy (typically electricity, gas, oil, or coal).
In some instances no conventional heating of cooling is required at all. In some instances the invention reduces the time to reach desired temperatures inside such buildings, habitats, or other predominantly enclosed spaces.