In 2017, 46.5% of school buildings in Italy needed urgent maintenance regarding architectural usability and accessibility, but also concerning structural, energy, and environmental aspects. A total of 36% of the energy needs during the operational and management phase of the Italian school sector are required by secondary schools. The main objective of this paper is to propose an integrated (architectural, energy, and environmental) redevelopment for the “Raffaello” School in Pistoia (Italy), aimed at improving the environmental and technological system and decreasing the building’s primary energy demand. Here, for the sake of brevity, we will only deal explicitly with energy rehabilitation. The results show that the replacement of the artificial lighting system with LED lamps alone leads to a 45% decrease in primary energy demand.
In Italy in 2020, only 15.5% of school building heritage was retrofitted from an energy and environmental point of view. In this paper, the cost-optimal method was applied to two different school buildings belonging to the same Italian cold climate zone but characterized by different structural and technological solutions. The research aims at defining the cost-effective redevelopment solution among several ones proposed to apply to this building type. At the same time, this paper provides a critical analysis of the methodology applied, highlighting deficiencies related to a not proper evaluation of environmentally friendly retrofitting measures. In a cost-effective context, the main results show that the intervention on the heating system is more convenient than the retrofitting of the envelope. The energy saving is equal to about 35% for both considered schools. Among the different proposed requalification configurations, the adoption of PV (photovoltaic) electric generation is included. In this regard, an optimization procedure was implemented in a generative design environment to maximize energy production with reference to different design parameters. As a result, a solution with south oriented PV modules with a tilt angle of 42° and arranged in 0.7 m spaced rows proved to be the most effective.
Industrial buildings in Italy are currently highly energy intensive. Their old age prevents them from complying with current environmental and energy requirements; consequently, redevelopment initiatives should therefore be considered in order to improve the overall performances of these facilities. Within this framework, this research aims to evaluate the results achievable by introducing indirect green façades as retrofitting solutions. Starting from a real case study building located in central Italy, energy simulations were carried out using DesignBuilder, varying buildings’ geometry, dimensions and windows-to-wall ratios as well as greenery coverage percentage. The evidence shows an appreciable potential for green walls to improve the summer performance of industrial buildings, as they resulted in a reduction in cooling energy demand during the summer season of about 14%. Moreover, external surface temperature was reduced by 8 °C during the hottest days, ensuring higher durability in building components. Furthermore, indoor air temperature during the summer design week decreased by 0.6 °C. During the winter season, the green façades avoid exploiting free solar gains due to incident solar radiation, and a slight increase of about 4% occurred in heating energy needs. For this reason, the implementation of deciduous vegetation species should be evaluated for industrial buildings located in Mediterranean latitudes.
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