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The paper analyses, seven years after the completion of construction works, the case study of the High School "L.Orsini" in Imola (BO). This sustainable school building was characterised since the design program phase by an innovative approach, based on integration of the various disciplines involved in building design as well as the contribution of a new professional figure, the energy and environmental consultant. This paper describes and analyses results and critical issues from the management and monitoring phases, with focus on the integration between technical systems and building. The high complexity of the applied technical building systems makes this case study of particular interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In hot-climate developing contexts roofs have undergone radical changes under the effect of the availability of profiled metal sheets, and that has often determined a decrease of their environmental performances. In the present article the thermal performances of low-cost roofs for hot climates are taken into account through computational experiments and compared, to reason about the available options. The results stress the importance of redundancy of devices hindering the transmission of heat in "cool” roof configurations for obtaining good performances at a low cost. An interesting example of configuration which results to be adequate for contexts characterized by wood scarcity is that of big-size ferrocement tiles ventilated in the hanged-ceiling space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]