TEMA

Category: Vol. 1 N. 2 (2015)

  • A new model for a comprehensive comfort assessment methodologyin buildings based on pre and post design procedure

    Abstract

     

    The research project here presented concerns the definition of a new integrated system for the evaluation and classification of indoor human comfort. In the present context, there is the need to develop a thermal comfort rating system for the building assessment, to be presented along with the energy certification. In order to do that, it is necessary to start off with the existing literature on indoor comfort evaluation models along with the analysis of some sustainable rating systems for buildings.

  • Sustainability of compact cities: the SOS_UrbanLab activity

    Abstract

     

    Urban development is facing new challenges to allow the evolution of the environment, in accordance to sustainability principles. In this context, decision makers have to answer to three main issues: how to intervene on the existing compact cities? How to combine and develop interventions on different scales? How to move from requalification to regeneration? The SOS_UrbanLab (Engineering Laboratory for Construction and Environmental Sustainability) researches, starting from a multi-scale analysis, propose a set of ecofriendly solutions to support the potential and capability of territories, integrating their benefits to reach a full sustainable approach.

  • Design and construction methods and techniques for the sustainable renovation of existing buildings

    Abstract

     

    This paper presents a preliminary phase for the study of some possible strategies for the sustainable renovation of a class of existing residential buildings located in Tuscany in the Florence area. The analysis of the building chosen for the research, conducted both from the functional point of view and from the energetic one, will lead to the choice of the most suitable recovery measures, taking into account the climate zone and the building structure.

  • Energy efficient office buildings in Italy

    Abstract

     

    In order to support the decision-making process and to face with the European Directive, it appears overriding focusing on the analysis of administration buildings because many constructions, owned and occupied by public authorities, enclose offices. These constructions are generally complex for typological aspects, their energy-needs are relevant especially for electricity consumptions and require highlevel of indoor comfort. Hence, the present paper presents the logic reference frame of a research that has studied the influence of some design criteria on the energy performance of office buildings located in Italy and proposes an example of low-energy office building.

  • Evolutionary aspects of the technology of building wood

    Abstract

     

    The research has as its objective the analysis of the evolutionary aspects of the technology of wood in the planning and realization of the residential house building. Through the study of the architectonic and structural features of the heritage, and of the recent innovations of wood, the historical evolution of the construction methods is pointed out together with the possibility of using wood as structural material. These timber structures have elevated performances, both for their sustainability and energetic efficiency, and for their fire and seismic resistance.

  • Building Information Modelling: insights, applications, evaluation of limits, additional proposals and widespread strategies

    Abstract

     

    The acronym BIM identifies a computational method for the numerical modeling of the entire design process whenever there is a high risk of failure of the project or of waste of resources. Today is particularly important to understand the level of harmonization of this kind of systems with the different realities especially in the European context where a high density of not-performing buildings pushes for more and more sustainable redevelopment. In this sense, this research aims to give a contribution to the evelopment of the theory, the practice and the dissemination of this new method.

  • Application of titania nanocoating to clay brick fau00e7ades for biofouling prevention: efficiency and effect of substratum

    Abstract

     

    The goal of this study was to explain the influence of the total porosity and the surface roughness on the bioreceptivity of clay bricks by phototrophic microorganisms. This correlation was studied on both specimens treated with TiO2 nanocoating and untreated control specimens. An accelerated fouling test was performed by sprinkling a suspension of Chlorella mirabilis and Chroococcidiopsis fissurarum on sample’s surfaces. Results showed that specimen’s microstructure play a key role in the biofouling process. Finally, TiO2 was able to inhibit the biofouling of clay bricks irradiated with UV-A light except in the case of high porous rough specimens.

  • New building design through recycling materials

    Abstract

     

    The artificial aggregates represent the solution for solving the difficult problem of industrial waste disposal and, in addition, they can substitute natural aggregates. Concrete results with simple tools and materials can be produced, such as brick studying its properties and applications with a careful experimentation with productive character. As a consequence, the high environmental quality, if pursued with care for technological innovation, is not a constraint, but a real economic opportunity that increases efficiency of natural resources, energy and materials, for obtaining a final product with high performances

  • Materials for sustainable transformation of fragile contexts. Designing, building, layering

    Abstract

     

    The field of interest of this research is the design and the construction in historical contexts. This work has its conceptual structure in the theme of the dual capable of investigating a key aspect of the issues between old and new: their relationship. The lecture key allows a first important step: the interpretation of complex problems through their reduction to pairs of concepts and thus related relations, among which the project takes place. At the base of this research is the vision of architecture primarily as an outcome that may be investigated in its results and its foreshadowing premises and projects.

  • Panel for Building: a new typology of platform frame

    Abstract

     

    This paper describes the feasibility and engineering test made on the construction system patented with the name “Panel for Building”. This panel is made of vertical and horizontal profiles in thin pre-formed sheet and two stiffening plasterboard slabs located on opposite sides of the structure. Panel for Building represents an innovation in platform frame structures, because it uses cheap and easily found components. Forth more the use of plasterboard slabs reduces the layers of the wall and improves overall performance. This system allows to construct high performance buildings by optimizing construction time.

  • Concept of an hydrothermal energy heat pump system for energetic requalification of historical buildings

    Abstract

     

    Historic buildings are still excluded from the scope of regulatory framework concerning energy efficiency and environmental sustainability since European Directive 2002/91/EC and its following recast. Anyway, it is possible to provide renewable energy source systems in valuable historic buildings according to existing plants characters and possibly controlling complex safety mandatory framework requirements. A case study is presented in order to underline a development of sea hydrothermal energy use in high-value historic building heritage.

  • Materials for the transformation of weak contexts. Urban quality and new densities on the margin: complex sustainability and soil-occupation techniques.

    Abstract

     

    It is important to meditate on the essence of dwelling considered as the relation between human beings, spaces and places, and on building as the edification of places via the arrangement of spaces: isn’t it clear how the premodern knowledge of dwelling and building produced forms, simple spaces and complex aggregations able to mediate multiple contingencies that belong to the technical, performance, existential or social spheres? And how can the contemporary mindset convert the combination of the necessities, whether expressed or not, into spaces and places?

  • A Simulation Model for Building Occupancy Prediction

    Abstract

     

    At present, few computational methods exist that support architect in predicting how their design will be used and experience after its construction. The research described here aims at establishing a new approach for the computational simulation of building occupancy, focused on a clear definition of use scenarios as specific structures of active entities called Events. They allow the formalization of parts of building use process in terms of Actors involved, Activities performed and Space where these events takes place. This modeling framework is functional to simulation environment, where scripted building use process is effectively computed and simulated..

  • Precast Concrete Panels for Industrial Architecture in Northern Italy

    Abstract

     

    The research presented here concerns the use of precast concrete panels for the construction of ‘wide spaces’ and focuses on their presence in industrial architecture in Italy. The purpose is to carry out an analysis and documentation of the use of panels, the development and the present condition of these buildings, following the main research topics of the field of study. The first result is a database on precast concrete industrial architecture in northern-Italy, designed to collect information about the buildings, the prefabricated systems, the designers who worked on prefabrication, and the industry of precast concrete elements.

  • Steel construction in Italy in the 1930s: the case of the Societ à Nazionale Officine di Savigliano

    Abstract

    The aim of the research is to retrace that part of the Italian construction, which concerns steel frame structures. Considering the 1930s in particular, the study focuses on the case of one of the most important Italian company in the field of metallurgy and steel construction: the “Società Nazionale Officine di Savigliano” (national company workshops Savigliano).

  • Analysis and methods of seismic risk in the historic urban areas: the case study in city of Salerno

    Abstract

     

    The research described in the abstract presents a procedure to address risk assessment of large-scale urban systems with the aim to contribute at the development of risk mitigation policies for downtowns buildings. The observation of the earthquakes effects in Italy clearly highlights the role of the high vulnerability of the existing building on the consequences in terms of casualties and damage, rather than the severity of seismic events, especially in historical contexts. The objective of this study is to propose a procedure and a tool for the assessment and mitigation of seismic risk in urban areas.

  • The construction of the historic theatres in the Sicilian area: knowledge as a tool for their rehabilitation

    Abstract

     

    In Sicilian area, as well as elsewhere in Europe, the theatres built between the last decades of the XVIII century and the beginning of the XX century are progressively disappearing because of integrations and substitutions required by the new “modernity”, the change of use of the building itself that do not respect the original purpose. Nevertheless, beyond the updates caused by the respect of the new laws concerning the security in public spaces and a great confidence in concrete, there are still many theatres witness of this very interesting typology. This study recognizes and analyses the peculiar elements of major and minor theatre structures.

  • Rehabilitation technology of traditional architecture: managing coexistence between conservation and innovation

    Abstract

     

    The study presented in this abstract focuses its attention on the rehabilitation by the technological point of view of traditional architecture that belongs to historical city nucleus. Which building technology characteristics are considered as constant, and which ones are considered as changeable, in today rehabilitation practice, with respect to the problem of managing the coexistence between conservation of the cultural values and innovation to respond to contemporary exigencies? This study tried to answer this question by applying a comparative case study strategy.

  • Urban Infiltrations: recovery and reinterpretation of local constructive characters

    Abstract

     

    A high thermal resistance and air tightness of the building envelope risk to create great internal moisture load with consequences for durability of materials and inhabitants’ comfort and health. The passive solution here proposed is a moisture buffering “active” device (MB-AD), to be integrated in the building envelope, which is able to measure the RH indoors and react by increasing the MB ability of a material forcing the passage of air inside it. The hygrothermal performance of the device has been experimentally tested and results showed that the Moisture Buffering Value measured in the “active” device increased until 29% more than the “passive” one.

  • M.E.T.A. – project: a software to retrain the historical buildings

    Abstract

     

    The research offers an easy-to-use instrument (expert system) usable during the stage of the preliminary design, to evaluate the prefeasibility of the operations aimed to the improvement of the energy performances of the building system, compatible with historic and artistic features. The expert system has been processed in collaboration with a partner, a producer of related software and services. The application of this expert system has been conducted on a typical rustic farmhouse, placed in Falciano del Massico and erected with grey tuff in the second half of the nineteenth century.

  • Reuse and recycling in construction: novel photocatalyticnano-mortars from valorised industrial wastes

    Abstract

     

    Production of novel eco-composite nano-mortars for architectural finishing, designed to combat environmental pollution affecting building shells, is reported. Specimens consist of a natural hydraulic lime mortar matrix doped with various kinds of nanophotocatalysts, produced from valorized industrial wastes: TiO2-hexaferrite from Fe3O2, and Ti(SO4)2-hydroxyapatite from Atlantic codfish bones. Samples were characterized and their photocatalytic activity was evaluated. Analysis showed that industrial wastes may be usefully reused to produce a new generation of sustainable, cheap and multifunctional novel building materials.

  • Works of Giuseppe Nicolosi in Cassino: history of the building process and restoration

    Abstract

     

    The town of Cassino, located in Southern Lazio and stronghold of the German defensive line Gustav, was fully involved in the famous wartime events of the Second World War and, as well know, was completely destroyed its building heritage and infrastructure’s apparatus. Therefore, just after the war the reconstruction of a city without its urban polarities and ordinary residential buildings began. From these issues, the design and construction experience in Cassino of Giuseppe Nicolosi got started. The paper refers this history and provides a contribution to the Italian engineering history of the late twentieth century

  • Materials for the sustainable transformation of weak contexts

    Abstract

     

    The structures, the forms, the relational subsystems, the permeabilities, the porosities, the spacial stratifications that define the systems to access and penetrate places are the subjects that direct the reading. The materials, the techniques and the wisely-constructed forms of those pertincences that are found in the most solid and well-preserved environments are the investigation subject with the aim to read the built example of a system of cozy spaces within them. Those places still can teach both a profound spatial and building design lesson.

  • Photocatalytic nanotreatments for architectural stone surfaces

    Abstract

     

    Transparent self-cleaning nanocoatings made up by titanium dioxide (TiO2) colloidal suspensions applied by spray on limestone have been tested in order to assess their influence on stone substrates and their photocatalytic activity. The deposition of TiO2 nanoparticles did not lead to damaging effects on substrate, on the other hand self-cleaning efficiency was evident. Furthermore, treated stones have been artificially aged to evaluate their behaviour over time and their possible lifespan. The efficiency of TiO2 nanotreatments seems durable over time, but further investigations are necessary to establish the real resistance of TiO2 on stones.

  • Cost-optimal analysis of building renovation strategies and the assesment of the renovation potential of a built asset

    Abstract

     

    Different building renovation options have been analyzed, both for energy performances (evaluated adopting the quasi-steady-state calculation method, adopted from national and local regulations, ISO 13790) and for cost of interventions. The economic convenience of different options has been evaluated through different parameters. Between all of them, the Global Cost of the intervention during the predicted economic life cycle appears to be the most suitable parameter to establish the renovation potential of a building and/or a built asset.

  • Application of LCA methodology to the CLT panels made according to a short chain production process and definition of the benchmarks for environmental impact indicators

    Abstract

     

    This paper describes the research activities related to the study of LCA methodology applied to the sector of construction and related to possible improvements and developments in this context. The research has provided a first step of analysis of the state of the art and a second one of verification of the methodology through the application to a case of study represented by the CLT panels produced by a company of Friuli Venezia Giulia. Subsequently, a critical analysis of the work was conducted and were proposed qualitative guidelines for the definition of benchmarks for the interpretation of the LCA results.

  • Proposed Methodology for the sustainable audit in the requalification projects

    Abstract

     

    The energy audit is a potential approach that can be taken solutions to solve in a coherent way a part of the problem of the redevelopment of existing buildings and its inefficient; a problem that can and must be transformed into a great opportunity. We would introduce a proposal methodology for a “sustainable” audit in which the rules of the sustainable design are applied. This methodology were developed over time and it was tested on several real buildings.

  • Sustainability in the restoration and management of the historic architecture in Palermo

    Abstract

     

    This research investigates the energy and environmental sustainability in the restoration and conservation of historic buildings. It focuses on the architectural heritage of Palermo, which can be a significant case study for the Mediterranean area. Its objective is to analyse the current energy performance of this historic architecture and its potential for energy improvement. Therefore, it aims at proposing a methodology to combine the enhancement of energy and environmental performances of the historic architecture of Palermo with the need of its material and aesthetic conservation, in the frame of the current regulations.

  • Masonry between Art and Science: guidelines for restoring hall buildings

    Abstract

     

    In this paper a methodology of analysis and intervention for masonry structures is proposed, with particular reference to hall buildings, whose composition is governed by a continuous space with a representative function. In a climate where the principles of restoration are to be respected along with those of structural safety, it is necessary to carefully study the historical, geometric and technological aspects of buildings and use models of structural analysis which allow to limit the consolidation works by interpreting the actual static behavior of masonry constructions.

  • Analysis of cooperative interpretation of constructive and degradationinformations for the assessment of the state of physical preservation oftraditional architectures in prevalent vertical development. TheANVIV protocol

    Abstract

     

    The assessment of the conservation status of traditional architectures historical scale requires more extensive analysis tools, which make it possible to synthesize and process parameters of interest for the formulation of an opinion on the state of conservation of the same. The research proposes the development of a protocol for the acquisition of information and interpolation degradation and construction for each sub-system connoting the building, in a position to comment in an expeditious status global and local conservation of the same.

  • Urban disaster resilience. The role of built heritage in historical Italian towns

    Abstract

     

    The concept of Resilience is now closely related to Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR). The built heritage plays an increasingly important role in the definition and implementation of urban resilience to disasters. In particular, historical Italian towns represent a significant example of urban organism, evolved and adapted itself a result of the seismic history of the country, which has characterized morphologies, typologies and masonry construction techniques. The objective of the research is to provide a proposal for preventive strategies for the post-crisis reconstruction, aimed to the implementation of urban resilience.

  • Analysis of the construction elements of tholoi

    Abstract

     

    The aim of this study is to show that the analysis of features and construction elements of ancient buildings allow to provide to their correct preservation. A deep knowledge of constructive feature and static behavior allow to verify the hypothesis of tholos completion for the ruins of an ancient architecture, located in the sud-est of Sicily, and called “La Favorita”. Previously, the ruins were attributed by archaeologists to the trigona model, based on the contrast of vaulted spaces which are absent in the above ruins and in tholoi architecture.

  • A sustainable methodology for the rehabilitation of minor historic centres. A case study in the seismic crater of Abruzzo Region

    Abstract

     

    The doctoral research links the issue of rehabilitation of small historic centres of Abruzzo Region hit by earthquake of 2009 to the environmental issue, proposing the reuse of this heritage through a sustainable strategy that put in network its potentiality and investigates open spaces and energy networks. The research proposes the development of an operative methodology that helps to overcome the gaps of the reconstruction process and those related to the integration of energy efficiency in historical contexts, providing indicators of compatibility and a lot of compatible solutions.

  • Future scenarios of the construction industry