• Energy Research

Even before Covid-19 although in the very center of the old town and historic center of Naples there were abandoned buildings and complexes, uninhabited and unused for decades. The cause is attributed to multiple reasons such as functional obsolescence, failure to adapt to intervening European standards in terms of hospital construction, technological facilities to standards, etc. The health crisis which strongly affected European societies revealed the fragilities of our healthcare systems. In Italy, a large number of COVID-19 patients congested hospitals while the continuity of essential services was interrupted at the expense of other needs. At the same time, the process of abandonment of historic buildings affects different monumental hospitals, such as the “San Giacomo degli Incurabili” and the “Carlo Forlanini” in Rome, or the “Gesù e Maria” Hospital, “San Gennaro dei Poveri” and the “Santa Maria del Popolo degli Incurabili” in Naples. This paper reports three case studies of Neapolitan historical hospitals regeneration proposals with the goal of strengthening the existing community healthcare system and developing energy efficiency and seismic improvement strategies in the spirit of sustainable development. Leveraging the flexibility of monumental hospitals, the proposed light retrofit interventions restore the historial healthcare functional destination ensuring also the reuse of such an heritage. The current research delineates an approach to the recovery and enhancement for social and cultural purposes of unused and abandoned historical hospitals. This approach can positively affect the quality of life of citizens and the use of health services, while recovering historical cultural heritage buildings.

In the frame of developing sustainable, reliable, and regenerative interventions on existing buildings, namely on large-scale public housing, the implementation of functional, technological, and effective strategies is devoted to thoroughly assessing the transformability of buildings using trustworthy performance indicators. With this aim, in the present paper, an assessment framework tool is presented and tested to evaluate the potential of buildings for transformation through the detection of regeneration strategies for the reduction of energy consumption, a definition of the new apartments’ internal layout, and the implementation of sustainable systems to foster rainwater harvesting. The procedure is tested on a case study in Latina (Italy), showing its suitability to quantitatively assess the regenerative potentiality of public housing, thus resulting in an effective supporting tool for designers and policy makers.

The propensity for sustainability represents one of the most difficult challenges globally in recent decades. The programs of 2030 Agenda define some objectives related to construction including the increase in housing, the promotion of social inclusion and the upgrading of healthcare structures. The main objective of the research is the definition of an instrument to support the administrations to identify buildings suitable for transformation in social housing and healthcare constructions, with reference to public asset with a cultural value, disused or "badly used". Through multi-criteria evaluations based on the analysis of parametric indicators, the methodology intends to define a protocol useful for the purposes already mentioned and for meta-project guidelines that guarantee a sustainable approach to the transformation and regeneration of the real estate in question. The initial objectives and methodological aspects are presented in this paper.

The aim of this paper, in line with the 2030 European Agenda and 2021 Italian “Recovery and Resilience Plan” objectives, is to define an evaluation methodology and tool to support public administrations to detect buildings, currently unused or underused, that might be apt for transformation interventions. The focus is on historical Italian healthcare buildings since these show widespread decay and neglect. A five-step methodology has been developed: screening of public assets; classification, evaluation, and identification of buildings, based on the “potential index”; GIS mapping and inventory; selection of buildings for in-depth analysis; BIM digitization and definition of the “transformability index”. In the fifth phase, an evaluation tool is integrated into the BIM software to automatically calculate the transformability index of each building using six indicators: usability, fragmentation, modifiability, roof implementation, external envelope, and window-to-wall ratio. The “transformability index” helps define the most appropriate buildings to intervene with for reuse. Building transformation is connected to construction features and layout organization and it is limited by architectural, structural, and artistic constraints.

In Italy, after the destructions of World War II, due the particular development of economy and the political decision in the field of reconstruction, a government option for building construction industrialization comes up only at the beginning of ‘60s. A wide number of different proposals of building sector industrialization came from technicians, industries and researchers, and the debate interested all the years between the end of the war and the approval of the law number 167 in 1962.First of all the city builders are fascinated by the French Grands Ensembles and the main design tools are based on standard house typologies and infrastructures projecting. This happens before that the national technical laws transpose the seismic and energy design and put them into the professional practice. Thus, the paper focuses on a heritage referred to industrial production for infrastructures, with a high compromising in respecting requested building performances. The case study is the high-rise building typology in the neighborhood of Tor Bella Monaca in Rome, one the biggest of that period in Italy. Here, comparing to the last INA-Casa experience, the quality of apartment’s plan collapses, and new critical issues become usual on the point of view of the envelope (thermal bridges and low insulation).The group of research proposes the analysis of different possible interventions based on an integrated approach between quality of residential units improvement, energy and seismic retrofit. As expected, the cost-effective evaluation of the proposal shows the convenience of the integrated approach in supporting public administration in social housing renovation. The best solutions, according to the parameter of efficiency, resistance, residential units improvement, offer an increasing of residential units (plus 40%), a balanced reduction of energy consumption associated to energy removable production, and a considerable improvement of the seismic behavior of the structure.

Nowadays, energy retrofit interventions on the existing building stock are of paramount importance towards energy consumption and emissions reductions in the construction sector. Such interventions are also crucial in the view of increasing cities resilience with respect to the intensification of frequent extreme weather events, such as cold spells and heatwaves. Indeed, a wide portion of our cities is dated and lacking with respect to performances. These are the motivations behind the proposed sustainable approach, which deals with the environmental perspective, but also with social and economic ones, by proposing the retrofit of the Public Residential Building stock (Edilizia Residenziale Pubblica, ERP). The objective is to improve the energy performance of ERP stock by means of construction materials coming from local km0 agricultural waste and by-products. The research was conducted by means of in field and numerical analyses of the energy performances of a relevant case study building. Different layers of bio-based, recycled construction materials for the envelope were tested with respect to their efficacy in improving the energy performance of a case study building. The results demonstrate that the most performing envelope solutions and their combination are able to reduce up to 36% of the yearly energy consumption for heating.

A large part of the Italian territory is characterized by a spatial organization structured in small towns, with natural and cultural resources, vast material and immaterial heritage, and economic potential. All features often mirrored by a limited accessibility to essential services (transportation, health, and education systems), depopulation and high building vulnerability and inefficiency. The aim of this paper is to propose a methodology for the systemic definition of intervention strategies for building recovery and valorization, as part of a more complex strategy of inner areas’ revitalization, to be achieved in accordance with the cultural landscape, local construction techniques and materials, and the specific characteristics of considered buildings. The chosen case study has been the small town of Conza della Campania, whose historic center was almost destroyed by the 1980’s Irpinia earthquake; although abandoned since, the damaged building stock still preserves acknowledged architectural and constructive qualities, and the area has many potentials linked to its natural and productive vocations. Applying the methodology, seismic and energy retrofitting strategies resulted in the definition of adaptive abacuses describing the most efficient interventions for each considered building, derived by detailed analysis related to their construction techniques, architectural features, historical evolution, and artistic/cultural values. In terms of urban regeneration, these abacuses, as basis for seismic and energy building recovery, act as adaptive tools to support the definition of compatible operational choices and ensure the development of sustainable strategies leading to holistic results.