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Recent earthquakes have highlighted a general inadequacy of the existing building stock in Italy and the need to address this critical issue by increasing its structural resilience. At the same time, the problem of energy consumption in existing residential and commercial buildings is increasingly significant and incompatible with the environmental targets set by governments. Considering all the aforementioned aspects, the seismic upgrading of existing buildings, based on the use of an eco-friendly and sustainable technology, has become more and more relevant and different intervention approaches have been developed. This paper aims to provide a multidisciplinary approach for the performance assessment of an eco-friendly and sustainable RC-framed skin for integrated refurbishment of existing buildings. A preliminary description of such skin technology is provided with particular attention to the simultaneous improvement of structural (e.g., seismic) and non-structural (e.g., energy, acoustic) performances and to issues concerning the limitation of invasiveness and interruption of use of the building. Technological details and in situ installation phases are described with special regard to connection and interaction with the existing building. Procedures for the assessment of upgraded building performances, in terms of seismic capacity and thermo-hygrometric and acoustic performances, are defined and applied to a selected basic cell structure. The feasibility and sustainability of the proposed upgrading intervention is finally investigated by means of a holistic Life Cycle Assessment for environmental impact and Life Cycle Cost for an economic evaluation. Finally, results from a multidisciplinary performance assessment are critically discussed by relating the performance aspects to the technological and installation issues.

Energy efficiency has become a common target for every building: the European Directive 2010/31 provides that by 2020 every new building must consume very little fossil energy (Nearly Zero Energy Building) and from 2018 also public buildings will have to meet this requirement. Although the objectives imposed by the new legislative references are very clear, modify the existing heritage in many cases is not easy. For example, many buildings, including public ones, in addition to consuming a lot of energy, are also constrained by the Superintendence for Architectural, Landscape, Historical and Artistic Assets; therefore it becomes difficult to improve their energy performance. This paper presents a preliminary energy audit of the historical building of the School of Engineering and Architecture in Bologna (Italy). It was built in the 30s, is one of several public buildings of particular historical and architectural interest for the city of Bologna and it is constrained architecturally. Special attention has been focused on the energy consumption for heating during the winter season. The audit was carried out taking into account the European standard EN 15603, using the method of energy signature based on actual consumption. The results of the energy analysis show an energy saving of about 15% with operations building management and over 30% with improvements of the heating system and the windows.