Building Enclosure Consulting

Kaz dressed as a margrave during historical reenactment of Leba Kingdom in 2009. (Kaz no longer wears a wig and fancy clothes.)

Mr. Karol Kaźmierczak (Kaz) M.Sc. is a facade physician. He cares for ailing building facades. On the average day you may spot him climbing a skyscraper or crawling dusty roof cavities, and on the average night he wanders around roofs with his thermal imager searching for rain leaks. If you don’t see him outside, it’s probably because he runs thermal simulations in a dark computer cave otherwise known as his office.

Kaz is a senior building science architect with 20 years of façade engineering experience diversified among building enclosure technical design, consulting, construction inspections, diagnostic testing, and field investigations.

Kaz bridges the traditional gaps among the mechanical, structural, and architectural disciplines, and between the design and construction due to his specialized European façade engineering experience, architectural education, and a strong field presence. He no longer practices facade engineering; instead he practices MacGyver engineering by developing custom procedures and tools to diagnose failures of existing buildings.

Kaz is a registered architect in New York and Florida, carries CDT and LEED-AP certificates, speaks publicly, and writes articles on subject of building enclosures.

Kaz is an internationally renowned architectural glazing expert. You can see him sometimes as he wades through piles of broken glass in order to find out who broke it and how. He is also called as an expert witness in forensic disputes.

He was also involved in major forensic investigations in the southeast region of the U.S, providing assistance in evaluation of property damage. He investigated prominent cases, such as the collapse of the monumental skylight in the Embassy Suites hotel in Hunt Valley, Maryland, and tornado damage to the Georgia Dome, Georgia World Congress Center, and CNN Headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.

He brings an organized, holistic approach to the building enclosure design and remediation because his expertise covers many facets of building enclosure design, such as the control of: wind, air, moisture, heat, light, sound, impact, cost, wildlife, fire, smoke, aging, and access.

He specializes in high-rise buildings, and has been involved with facades of over 400 buildings located on two continents, in various climates. Kaz designs, engineers, reviews, and investigates high-rises, analyzing failures and damages, monitoring construction in progress, and producing calculations, analyses, and computer simulations, and drafting systemic and interface details. His technical design contributions to many innovative, cutting-edge, high-rise cladding projects, including unusual combinations of materials and systems, double curvatures, smart double skins, intelligent shading, and whole-glazing facades gave him the unique perspective of curtain walls.

Kaz was a founding chairman of BEC Miami, sat on the Steering Committee for Florida’s Building Energy Rating System (BERS), and belonged to miscellaneous professional organizations, such as AIA, CSI, and ASHRAE.

Here is the link to his LinkedIn page, and his dramatically outdated personal website.

Besides facade engineering, he loves to tinker. His workshop features many unusual tools he designed and built himself, such as a “big ass” 10,000 cfm blower door.  His latest inventions are featured in Farm Show magazine. His work leaves little time for his passions: reading  books about economy, scuba diving, horseback riding, windsurfing, skiing, tennis, biking, and aviation.