Qualità ambientale: approccio bioclimatico e riqualificazione del patrimonio esistente per il social housing / Environmental quality: sustainable approach and retrofit of the existing building heritage for social housing

Abstract

Although European Community and national mandatory requirements are pushing towards existing buildings energy retrofit actions based on the energy efficiency upgrading of the building and service equipment system, the approach on the existing social housing needs to move beyond the simple energy saving actions and to be evaluated as a process, whose goal is the valorisation of the overall building value, from the single building to the district scale, with attention to the building stock’s quality and to the occupants’ well-being. Through existing buildings’ energy retrofit it is indeed possible to achieve significant targets in terms of “eco-systemic” quality, where attention must be oriented, in an integrated way, towards occupants’ comfort requirements (thermal, acoustic, visual, olfactory, and tactile), building management, security and fruition issues. In this sense, the low technological and functional quality of the existing social housing stock, together with its extension, can be considered as a strategic “resource” and the retrofit action as a decisive “tool” for the improvement of the energy, environmental, and housing quality.