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Buildings are responsible for about 40% of the European energy consumption and 36% of greenhouse gas emissions from energy. As stated by the European Renovation Wave, effective actions - both at the policy-legislative and academic and corporate research level – are crucial to making Europe climateneutral by 2050. In this framework, the “DRIVE 0” European Horizon 2020 project is aimed at developing innovative solutions for energy refurbishing the existing buildings, based on a circular approach. The circular solutions developed in cooperation between universities and factories are intended to be prototyped and implemented in real pilot cases in order to test their feasibility. This paper presents the specific Italian demo case located in Argelato, constituted of a manor villa included in the “Corte Palazzo” building complex. Two different envelope solutions – a traditional ETICS system and an innovative Plug&Play solution - are applied to the building in order to compare their circularity. The results of the analyses, which consider not only the Embodied Energy and Embodied CO2, but also parameters linked to the Design for Disassembly, Materials Origin, and Re-Usability of materials and components, bring out some important reflections on the actual lack of application of a circular approach to historic buildings., Conference Proceedings (https://paginas.fe.up.pt/~reuso/abstracts-proceedings/)

The decarbonisation of the building sector is a key issue in facing the climate crisis. The concept of circularity in the built environment is becoming more and more widespread to pursue this goal. This approach proposes the design of buildings paying particular attention to the origin of the materials and energy sources used for their manufacture and transport, as well as to their ability of assembly and disassembly to adapt to future uses and to minimise the production of construction and demolition waste. Lots of methods and tools for assessing the circularity of buildings are already available, but they are scarcely employed. One of the possible causes of the low employment of these tools lies in their complexity and difficult accessibility by stakeholders and users, in particular those not specialised in the construction sector. This reflection led to the purpose of defining a simplified method for assessing the level of circularity of buildings by evaluating the implementation of different intervention scenarios. This contribution comes up with an overview of the state of the art of European research scenarios and the currently most widespread best practices that meet the requirements of circular design. Subsequently, the methodology called “EASY – Express ASsessing tool for CircularitY”, developed by the University of Bologna in the framework of H2020 EU project “DRIVE 0” is reported. This methodology is aimed at identifying a numerical index for the evaluation of the circularity level of the overall building. This latter was compared with a cradle-to-gate LCA analysis performed using the OneClick LCA Software. Finally, the paper reports the results obtained from applying this method to four case studies in Europe, for which the feasibility study has approved the implementation of volumetric additions., Publisher: EdicomEdizioni https://www.edicomstore.it/vetrina/memoria-e-innovazione-memory-and-innovation/

Il focus del paper è valutare l’incidenza della modellazione ai fini della valutazione delle prestazioni energetiche degli edifici residenziali. In particolare, ciò che si vuole valutare è l’incidenza del dettaglio nella modellazione rispetto ai principali indicatori energetici, soprattutto l’EP. Al fine di determinare il complesso quadro normativo è stata fatta una ricognizione sul concetto di efficienza energetica a partire dal livello europeo e scendendo a cascata a livello nazionale. Definito il quadro generale si passa alla descrizione del caso di studio che è stato scelto all’interno del progetto europeo TripleA-reno, che ha tra i suoi obiettivi anche la progettazione di web tool semplificati per la valutazione speditiva della prestazione energetica degli edifici. La semplificazione del processo è finalizzata al coinvolgimento degli utenti finali non esperti senza rinunciare eccessivamente alla precisione delle valutazioni. Del caso di studio si descrivono la configurazione architettonica, la tipologia strutturale, gli impianti, i consumi, lo stato di conservazione, il progetto di miglioramento. Vengono altresì descritti i materiali utilizzati, le stratigrafie, gli impianti installati, le tipologie abitative. Una volta definito il software di modellazione che si intende utilizzare è stata effettuata una valutazione dettagliata della prestazione energetica dell’edificio oggetto di studio che è stato successivamente approssimato mantenendo inalterato soltanto il volume riscaldato lordo e le caratteristiche degli elementi opachi e trasparenti. Si sono poi messe in relazione le diverse valutazioni energetiche per farne un confronto e valutare quali siano i parametri che maggiormente vengono influenzati dalla semplificazione introdotta e dalla variazione del rapporto S/V.

Radical decarbonisation in the construction sector is an urgent need to mitigate climate change. Therefore, new environmentally sound technologies in timber have to be developed and applied for seismic strengthening of buildings in seismic active regions in order to allow them for a second life cycle. In combination with energy retrofit, such seismic intervention backs the EU renovation wave and empowers a clean energy system, because buildings operational heat energy demand will be lowered close to nearly Zero Energy Building (nZEB) level with an improved building envelope. The intervention adapts concepts and principles originally developed for precast concrete construction, post-tensioned (PT) timber frame systems have been developed and tested since 2005 at the University of Canterbury. The technology takes advantage of unbonded post-tensioned steel tendons passing through internal cavities in timber beams or walls to create a moment resisting connection. The seismic demand is satisfied through controlled rocking between structural elements and tendon elongation, which ensures recentering capabilities. Post-tensioned timber frames as two-dimensional or three-dimensional structure are an emerging concept in timber engineering with great potential for the creation of high-performance and cost-efficient joints. The suitability as a retrofit concept is evaluated on two case studies that are part of the ProGETonE H2020 research program, which aims to provide an innovative, and integrated retrofit concept. Both measures serve to prolong the use of the building and avoid its demolition, a reuse case almost at is best, providing ultimate circularity index results. Therefore, only almost, because such a deep renovation intervention consumes new resources to build and also requires the replacement of specific components as windows or even the adaptation of floor plans to today’s needs. Decarbonisation effects are revealed by calculation of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) indicators for timber-based external retrofit envelope components that are assembled onto existing buildings for stiffer structures and for insulation purposes. The design and technology concept revealed allowing for the combination of strong structural behavior, necessary building physics performance to achieve for nZEB energy demand; with new Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) components exposed also connection details and construction processes are discussed.