paola.boarin

L’involucro edilizio è il limite fisico tra l’ambiente confinato e l’ambiente esterno e ad esso è imputabile il soddisfacimento delle esigenze legate alla sicurezza, al benessere (in relazione ai fattori coinvolti quali aria, temperatura, umidità, illuminamento e rumore), alla fruibilità, all’aspetto, alla gestione, all’integrabilità e alla salvaguardia ambientale. Anche nel caso dell’intervento di retrofit degli involucri, è possibile adottare procedure di commissioning finalizzate alla qualità del processo, formulate sulla base di un quadro esigenziale-prestazionale di riferimento.

The building envelope is the physical boundary between the confined environment and the external environment and it provides the fulfillment of the requirements related to safety, well-being (in relation to the factors involved, such as air temperature, humidity, lighting and noise), usability, appearance, management, new elements and materials integration and environmental protection. Even in the case envelopes retrofit, it is possible to adopt commissioning procedures aimed at the quality of the process, formulated on the basis of a need-performance framework.
The paper brings some considerations about the relationship between performance enhancement and performance compliance in the energy and environmental retrofit of existing building envelopes, explaining the building envelope commissioning process (BECx) and defining a need-requirement framework to be adopted during the pre-design, design, construction and operation phases. A final attention is given to the integration of the BECx process within the historical heritage.

Una policy innovativa per incentivare la realizzazione di tetti verdi ha portato risultati particolarmente interessanti per la città di Chicago, nell’ottica di una roadmap di sostenibilità che ha come primo importante traguardo il 2015. Anche gli edifici esistenti storicizzati sono coinvolti all’interno di politiche di green retrofit e la Chicago City Hall ne è un primo importante esempio.

An innovative policy for promoting green roofs has bring interesting results for the city of Chicago which is moving through a sustainable roadmap with a fist deadline in 2015. Also existing and historical buildings are involved into a green retrofit policies framework and the Chicago’s City Hall is the first important example.

I processi che perseguono gli obiettivi di salvaguardia di tutte le manifestazioni passate dei manufatti edilizi presentano una forte componente di sostenibilità rispetto ai fattori ambientali, economici e sociali, intendendo, per questi ultimi, anche la componente di valorizzazione degli aspetti culturali e testimoniali. Le attività connesse con la conservazione, la manutenzione e il recupero degli edifici storici diventano, dunque, azioni sostenibili e, pertanto, possono essere valutate attraverso gli strumenti e i metodi pertinenti a tale contesto. A tale proposito, l’intervento sul padiglione di Sant Manuel dell’Hospital de Sant Pau di Barcellona è stato valutato attraverso l’applicazione del rating system LEED® 2009 New Construction and Major Renovation al fine di evidenziare le criticità di applicazione di uno strumento generalmente utilizzato per l’architettura di nuova costruzione o per le ristrutturazioni importanti di edifici recenti.

Processes aimed at preserving buildings previous expressions have a strong sustainability connotation related to environmental, economic and social aspects, meaning also, for this last factor, the enhancement of cultural values. Activities connected with restoration, recovery and reuse of historic buildings become sustainable actions and, thus, may be evaluated with instruments and tools that are appropriated with this context. With this purpose, the restoration of the Sant Manuel pavilion of the Hospital de Sant Pau in Barcelona has been assessed with the LEED® 2009 New Construction and Major Renovation rating system, aiming at highlighting criticalities and potentialities of an instrument that is generally used for new buildings or for major renovations of recent ones. The building, commissioned to the modernist architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner and built between 1901 and 1922, was based on the hygienist ideas of the late19th century hospital buildings, an approach that strongly believes that the purity of the air breathed by patients (achieved by assigning a large volume to each one and by a strong ventilation) can have a strong impact in decreased mortality and increased recovery rates. The result is an exceptional project in terms of extension and quality, declared by UNESCO as a Heritage of Mankind, that is now undergoing a restoration process. In the research activity, the restoration process on the case study has been evaluated through the application of all prerequisites and credits of the LEED® rating system, an internationally recognized tool for environmental sustainability assessment. The result is a gap analysis that reveals many points of strength, but also some weaknesses and some omissions, in particular related to the restoration process.

Lo sviluppo di nuovi standard per orientare il processo edilizio di restauro e riqualificazione verso percorsi di sostenibilità deve necessariamente avvalersi di strumenti di validazione dei requisiti richiesti per la certificazione. Un edificio della campagna piemontese diventa il primo caso studio registrato del nuovo protocollo.

The development of new standards for orienting restoration and refurbishment processes towards sustainable paths must necessarily adopt tools for requirements evaluation aimed at the building certification. A rural building settled in the Piemonte countryside becomes the first registered case study of the new GBC Historic BuildingTM rating system.

La definizione di strategie multidisciplinari per il recupero e la ricostruzione di aggregati di edilizia pre-industriale fornisce l’opportunità di orientare lo sguardo verso nuovi – o ritrovati – principi di sostenibilità, anche in contesti, come quelli delle aree colpite da sisma, in cui l’intervento diventa una chiave fondamentale per la rinascita di contesti socio-culturali fortemente compromessi. Green Building Council Italia si sta muovendo all’interno di tale contesto per definire un protocollo di certificazione volontaria del livello di sostenibilità degli interventi di conservazione, manutenzione, recupero ed integrazione di manufatti pre-industriali.

Sustainability is an issue already well established for new construction that requires, in a refurbishment context, a higher awareness of its complexity and needs a powerful alignment of multiple operators at different levels. This complexity has so far been addressed by the specialist point of view and through intensive research that has contributed to a progressive in depth analysis of numerous aspects, limited, however, to individual disciplines. It is instead more and more important to work toward an interdisciplinary perspective because the analytical research may often lose the sight of the whole theme. Within a logic of sustainability, it will also be necessary to develop a project that should be in close relationship with the testimony of the historical built heritage and not in conflict with it, thus not compromising the its real wealth and potential. If “sustainable development the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”, the keeping the “potential” for the benefit of future generations must be read, in this case, in multiple interdependent dimensions: ecological, social and, above all, economic and cultural. This declination, culture, becomes a new - or already rediscovered - sustainability paradigm, orienting the building process towards the protection and promotion of all its previous expressions. Activities related to conservation and restoration of historic buildings become sustainable actions and, therefore, can be measured using tools and methods of this context.
Green Building Council Italia is moving within this complex cultural context. The actual main goal, developed through an interdisciplinary working group that brings together universities, research centres and leading companies in the construction sector, is the establishment of a voluntary certification protocol aimed at evaluating the sustainability level of conservation, refurbishment and integration processes in pre-industrial buildings. This innovative tool is based on the comparison and union of two different cultures: the sustainability criteria of the LEED® protocols and the wealth of knowledge of the restoration world. The different disciplines have significant similarities and affinities, associated in particular with the ultimate goals of identification, enhancement and transmission to the future generations of the cultural heritage in its physical expression and its aesthetic dimension.

L’intervento in zone colpite dal sisma può essere occasione per stimolare nel territorio un processo di rivitalizzazione, valorizzazione e parziale rifunzionalizzazione dei centri abitati minori. L’articolo presenta l’esito di uno studio condotto per l’Amministrazione di Apice per la ricostruzione sostenibile di un contesto particolarmente complesso dal punto di vista ambientale, sociale, economico e storico.

The recovery and retrofit of Regions damaged by earthquake can be an opportunity to encourage the revitalization, valorisation and partial repurposing of smaller towns. This article presents the results of a study accomplished for the Public Administration of Apice as instrument for sustainable reconstructive interventions of an area with very complex environmental, social, economic and historic aspects.