Kristian Fabbri - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Kristian Fabbri

6th International Congress on “Science and Technology for the Safeguard of Cultural Heritage in the Mediterranean Basin, 2014

The Malatestiana Library is in UNESCO\u2019s Memories du Monde, because the architecture and manu... more The Malatestiana Library is in UNESCO\u2019s Memories du Monde, because the architecture and manuscripts are the original XV century ones and they are in a state of perfect conservation. The strict relationship between the original architectural design, library management and microclimate, has allowed to reduce the damage of manuscripts, books and wood stalls, the same coming from the XV century. Nowadays, after 550 years, manuscripts and wood stalls are in perfect condition of conservation. In present paper we would like to put in evidence a fact: the majority of damage depends on mechanical action of manuscript consultation by readers, and does not depend on indoor microclimate factors (temperature, relative humidity). We argue that perfect conservation of manuscripts, books and wood stalls depends on two factors, on one hand the Library and manuscript loan management, on the other hand the specific microclimate conditions of the air inside the building. The study of the indoor microclimate infact, showed a stict connection between temperature and relative humidity (RH) constant trend balance, compared to outdoor climate variations. The constant trend value of temperature and RH creates perfect conditions against ground humidity in winter and summer for the conservation of manuscripts and wood stalls

Historic Indoor Microclimate of the Heritage Buildings, 2017

This chapter reports the study case of Santuario della visitazione del Valinotto in Carignano, cl... more This chapter reports the study case of Santuario della visitazione del Valinotto in Carignano, close to Turin. In contrast to the previously reported cases, in this building the research has been carried on alongside restoration works and part of the collected information has been used to tune the works on the church and the frescoes. Some results have been already published. The building is characterized by a vertical development of spaces, and the consequences of it, mainly on air stratification and of relative humidity, have been observed through the monitoring and the analysis of the resulting graphics of variables and cumulative curves.

Historic Indoor Microclimate of the Heritage Buildings, 2017

This chapter debates the first of the case studies: the indoor microclimate of a heritage buildin... more This chapter debates the first of the case studies: the indoor microclimate of a heritage building, the Malatestiana Library in Cesena. This building is particularly important as it represents a “unicum architettonico” (unique architectonic piece); since the year of its construction until today it did not change in the architectonic or technological configuration nor in the usage or contained heritage. It is almost a time capsule, survived until today with an indoor microclimate which is comparable to that of past times, excluding climate changes outside the building. And this is even more relevant considering that the role of this building is that of a library, where books require a specific range of microclimatic parameters for their conservation. Thanks to these analyses of microclimate, it has been possible to explain the peculiarities of the architectonic cross section of the building, which is perfect to guarantee an adequate indoor microclimate to preserve the books conserved there. The Malatestiana Library hence constitutes an interesting object to study, and part of this research has been described in journals and conferences.

Study of the indoor microclimate for preventive conservation and sustainable management of histor... more Study of the indoor microclimate for preventive conservation and sustainable management of historic buildings : The case of Villa Barbaro, Maser

Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 2021

The paper is aimed to illustrate how the study of the indoor microclimate, supported by the virtu... more The paper is aimed to illustrate how the study of the indoor microclimate, supported by the virtual simulation and by the knowledge of the historical evolutions of the building (managerial, usage and architectonical changes over the years), represents a preventive practice which allows to evaluate and predict the interactions between the object and the environment. To do that the authors present a case-study: room 33 in the Palace of Venaria Reale, in Turin, Italy. We have reproduced a virtual building model which presents the same indoor and outdoor microclimatic conditions of the original building. Moreover, we evaluated an alternative scenario that simulates the indoor microclimate of room 33 considering the HVAC systems continuously off. The comparison between the two virtual buildings allowed to estimate the impact of the HVAC system on the preventive conservation of the historical building, of the artefacts and of the occupants’ thermal comfort. Those simulations clarified whi...

Journal of Cultural Heritage, 2021

The conservation and safeguarding of historic buildings, and of everything that is housed within ... more The conservation and safeguarding of historic buildings, and of everything that is housed within them, represents a challenge whose value is currently shared at a world level. The conservation of these cultural assets depends on a number of variables, with the microclimate playing a decisive role among them. For at least two decades, scientific literature in the field has been reporting experiences on individual case studies relative to the study of the microclimate and criteria for the conservation of the cultural and architectural heritage, in this regard, standards have also been enacted. Nevertheless, in our view, the research involves stand-alone case studies that are not comparable among one another, in particular with regard to the risk assessment of the place where the assets are located and/or the damage that these assets may undergo as a result of the microclimate of their environment. In this contribution we intend to present two risk indices related to the microclimate: the Heritage Microclimate Risk (HMR) index, which defines the level of risk to which an indoor room is exposed, compared to maximum and minimum values defined according to standards or based on the historical microclimate; and the Predicted Risk of Damage (PRD) index, which links the value of the HMR with the risk of damage to a specific material/object, which is exhibited or conserved within the room. The HMR and PRD are determined by the microclimate variables monitored on site, in particular, Air Temperature and Relative Humidity, or they can be obtained by means of Building Simulation. The proposed indices make it possible to define the potential microclimate risk within a room, as well as the probability that these conditions can cause damage to the objects of value therein conserved (collections, paintings, etc.). As an example, we have reported the application of the two HMR and PRD indices to the case study of a hall of the Royal Palace of Venaria Reale in Turin (Italy).

Heritage, 2020

Environmental monitoring represents a key step for restaurateurs to follow who strive to ensure t... more Environmental monitoring represents a key step for restaurateurs to follow who strive to ensure the preservation of buildings and artifacts while allowing for people’s thermal comfort. This paper describes the possibilities and main issues arising from the study of indoor microclimates. The presented case study focuses on the monitoring data analysis for two rooms of the Realm of Venaria Reale, in Turin. The adopted methodology provides for the gathering of knowledge about the history, the geometry, and the change of use in the course of the lifetime of the building. This information allows us to construct a virtual model of the building, through which it is possible to evaluate the past and present and to hypothesize future scenarios regarding the indoor environmental conditions. Moreover, this paper presents a specific index, namely the Heritage Microclimate Risk (HMR), which enables us to evaluate the risk level to which the artifacts kept within historic buildings are exposed. W...

Historic Indoor Microclimate of the Heritage Buildings, 2017

In this chapter, the meaning of Historic Indoor Microclimate is debated, alongside with its relat... more In this chapter, the meaning of Historic Indoor Microclimate is debated, alongside with its relations with architecture, in particular historical one. This constitutes the main subject of the book, which holds high relevance in order to increase architectural knowledge, in the study of artistic and cultural heritage and in many other researches in a wide range of fields.

Sustainable Cities and Society, 2017

Highlight ► Outodoor microclimate evaluation in archaeological area ► Role and effect o... more Highlight ► Outodoor microclimate evaluation in archaeological area ► Role and effect of vegetation in outdoor microclimate physics variables (temperature, relative humidity) ► Accurancy of trees and vegetation framework in software simulation by ENVI-MET

Building and Environment, 2017

In order to detect possible downsides of building microclimate management or for identifying perf... more In order to detect possible downsides of building microclimate management or for identifying performance improvement options, it is fundamental to assess and certify building Indoor Microclimate Quality (IMQ). Considering that in heritage and museum buildings, the indoor microclimate should simultaneously ensure comfort of people and safety for the cultural heritage, its management takes on a multidimensional nature. Although in the literature IMQ certification methodologies for people already exist, these do not encompass the cultural heritage. We believe this integration, would be a valid management instrument for heritage buildings, historic houses and museums, especially if they are not equipped with full microclimate control systems. However, because environmental data acquisition activities have direct influence on the certification results, it is essential to evaluate them. These methodological aspects are here discussed on the basis of results from a microclimate monitoring in the main exhibition hall of Vleeshuis museum in Antwerp. Further, in accordance to the introduced methodological considerations, an IMQ certification model for building users and movable heritage is proposed.

The problem related to keep a given indoor climate quality in historic buildings, especially with... more The problem related to keep a given indoor climate quality in historic buildings, especially with museum functions or with housed exhibitions, is still an open international scientific debate. The double aim of ensuring optimal microclimate quality for artworks preservation, as well as hygrothermal acceptability for visitors and officers, was often difficult to be achieved due to the tight and steady limits proposed within standards and regulations. However, more recent evolution of people comfort theory based on ranges of adaptation or percentage of satisfaction may allow ranges of simultaneous comfort for people and artworks. Within the proposed study, by considering the priority of preserving artworks and building material integrity, it is investigated the leaning of people in lowering their own comfort expectations if - for preservations needs - specific microclimate conditions have to be ensured. Furthermore a simultaneous index of microclimate performance is proposed and exper...

Journal of Cultural Heritage, 2013

ABSTRACT Since the beginning of modern theories on restoration, in the first half of the 19th cen... more ABSTRACT Since the beginning of modern theories on restoration, in the first half of the 19th century, it seems that the problem of technological plants in historic buildings has been explicitly treated on few occasions. More than one and a half century later, several “generations” of plants have been installed in historic buildings or in buildings, which have meanwhile become historic, and a more attentive attitude has been developed, consisting in the preservation rather than the restoration of ancient architecture, and rethinking that attitude seems as important, as accepting the fact that plants themselves have become important documents that have to be preserved. This paper would like to illustrate why the preservation of historical plants is necessary, not only to attest the technological evolution of the plants themselves in relation to the changing ways of life and the life of buildings, but also to attest that they can sometimes be re-employed depending on their typology through the use of new technological products, drawing advantage from their potentiality.

Energy and Buildings, 2014

Building and Environment, 2018

This paper first reports the outcomes of a one-year measurement campaign of a passive house built... more This paper first reports the outcomes of a one-year measurement campaign of a passive house built in the Mediterranean climate of Cesena (Italy) in terms of thermal comfort parameters temperature and relative humidity and Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) parameter CO 2 concentrations. The design carried out with the help of the steady state Passive House Planning Package (PHPP) was able to guarantee good comfort conditions during the heating period, but on the other hand, overheating occurrences during the cooling season have been recorded for almost 50% time according to EN 15251 Standard. Further analyses conducted with the help of dynamic simulations in EnergyPlus allowed identifying the insulation levels and ventilation mode as the key design factors to change in order to reduce overheating to less than 20% of time while keeping a comfortable indoor environment in winter. The simplifications that can be made by reducing the insulation material thickness (up to a third of the original value) on the roof and on the walls, replacing triple-glazed windows with double-glazed windows and implementing a hybrid ventilation strategy instead of using Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery (MVHR) alone could also lead to economic savings. These savings, due to both lower construction costs and operational energy savings, amount to 8755 euros in terms of Net Present Value (NPV) over 30 years' time. The Passivhaus Standard can still be regarded as a good reference for designing low-energy and comfortable houses in a Mediterranean climate if some simplifications are made according to detailed building performance simulations.

Energies, 2017

Historical and heritage (especially UNESCO) buildings need a specific, peculiar approach regardin... more Historical and heritage (especially UNESCO) buildings need a specific, peculiar approach regarding energy performance, energy behavior, and indoor microclimate. Comparing a new building with a historical (UNESCO) building, it is evident that the degrees of freedom for implementing energy efficiency in historical buildings are strongly limited. Several constraints about the materials, the geometry, and the structures do not allow a comprehensive enhancement of energy performance or microclimate parameters. In this paper, we describe an energy building performance criterion adopted in order to find out the energy behavior in the Malatestiana Library. The challenge consists of optimizing energy efficiency and microclimate as well as a full preservation of ancient manuscripts. The study adopts Google Sketchup software to model three-dimensional (3D) buildings, and IESVE software to simulate an indoor microclimate. Software building models allow for the evaluation of different types of natural ventilation and section forms, e.g., original, without attic, and without ground floor. The results of the software modeling allow for a comparison of several building use modality effects and the effect of the presence of an attic and ground floor on indoor microclimate parameters in order to conserve and preserve ancient manuscripts.

Energy Procedia, 2017

Studies on Outdoor Comfort in urban open spaces adopt several tools and software to simulate micr... more Studies on Outdoor Comfort in urban open spaces adopt several tools and software to simulate microclimate models, energy performances and the fluid-dynamics of winds. Air temperature, wind speed, relative humidity are the typical input data used by the software to evaluate comfort indexes such as the Predicted Mean Vote [PMV], the Physiological Effective Temperature [PET] or the Universal Thermal Climate Index [UTCI]. Among the available software, Envi-met provides accurate outputs as well as the PMV index space distribution starting from a three-dimensional microclimate model. However it is affected by some limitations for what concerns a user centered approach including the changes in human metabolic activity (met) or clothes (clo). This paper offers a synthesis of a study performed on ENVI-BUG, an Envi-met algorithmic app, to obtain a fast calculation and distribution of local PMV point-by-point displayed with mannequin representation.

Data Revues 12962074 Unassign S1296207413000265, Sep 2, 2013

Energy Procedia, 2015

Maintaining a fixed indoor climate in historic buildings, especially if collections are housed is... more Maintaining a fixed indoor climate in historic buildings, especially if collections are housed is still an open scientific debate. The environmental management based on building historic microclimate and the one related to human thermal adaptation capability, may increase the time frequency of simultaneous comfort for people and collections leading to a new generation of Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) management and certification. Nevertheless some methodological unsolved issues related to the onsite activities aimed at assessing microclimatic quality either for people or for artefacts, as well as the conflict of parameters importance to consider during the certification process, leave room open to interpretation and arbitrary decisions. In this study a methodology for microclimate evaluation and certification with regard to people and heritage is proposed. The presented method, is based on the analysis of the physical attributes deviation from the optimal/safe levels. The final indexing can be supportive during regular-base microclimatic controls throughout different building spaces and time period.

Energy Procedia, 2015

The Directives 2002/91/CE and 2010/31/UE greatly evolved the building and real-estate sector towa... more The Directives 2002/91/CE and 2010/31/UE greatly evolved the building and real-estate sector towards low energy building, both in the case of building retrofitting and new buildings. Thanks to the Energy Performance Certificate influence on the real estate market, or thanks to the economic crisis, as it is some new buildings-the best-were built with Energy Class A or Nearly Zero classification. The Energy Building Performance standards, e.g. CEN Umbrella and their transposition, will be improved in the future, in spite of this these should be considered solid, and designers, architects and engineers must apply technical strategies (e.g. high insulation, reduction of air leakage, use of renewable systems) in order to reduce building energy consumption. The new challenge will be to improve relations between Building Energy Performance and Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ). As regards these relations, the CEN Umbrella provides to implement the Standard 15251. In the present paper we describe the results of IEQ monitoring in a low energy performance building (Class A+ less than 25 kWh/m 2 year). The results show that low energy performance building do not always guarantee a better category of IEQ, especially during the summer.

Energy Procedia, 2015

This paper aims to investigate the problem of attics conservation or dismantling from historic bu... more This paper aims to investigate the problem of attics conservation or dismantling from historic buildings. The attic, unconsciously inherited and planned with the traditional building techniques, constitutes a precious architectural heritage in the field of historic housing in the whole European patrimony. In many cases, the peculiarities of the type of techniques and the use of traditional local materials are the reasons why attics constitute an evidence of an active culture of know-how that has to be preserved. Furthermore, the attic-mediated heat transfer between indoor and outdoor environments, contributes to the saving of building heat loss. Nevertheless, the practice of eliminating attics is particularly diffused, and building owner or architects, preferring to dismantle their structure, compensate this loss by using insulating boards to constitute the final roofing section.

6th International Congress on “Science and Technology for the Safeguard of Cultural Heritage in the Mediterranean Basin, 2014

Historic Indoor Microclimate of the Heritage Buildings, 2017

Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 2021

Journal of Cultural Heritage, 2021

Heritage, 2020

Historic Indoor Microclimate of the Heritage Buildings, 2017

Sustainable Cities and Society, 2017

Building and Environment, 2017

Journal of Cultural Heritage, 2013

Energy and Buildings, 2014

Building and Environment, 2018

Energies, 2017

Energy Procedia, 2017

Data Revues 12962074 Unassign S1296207413000265, Sep 2, 2013

Energy Procedia, 2015

Within the context of nearly Zero-Energy Buildings, it is debated that the energy-centred notion ... more Within the context of nearly Zero-Energy Buildings, it is debated that the energy-centred notion of design, proposed by regulatory frames, needs to be combined with a further focus toward users' comfort and delight. Accordingly, the underlying theory of the research is that designers should take responsibility for understanding the heat flows through the building parts and its spaces. A design, which is sensible to the micro-thermal conditions coexisting in a space, allows the inhabitants to control the building to their needs and desires: for instance, maximising the benefits of heat gain from the sun moving a series of internal partitions so as to avoid the danger of overheating. It is thus necessary that existing simulation software tools are tested to the purpose of modelling and visualizing the indoor thermal environment complexity. The research discusses how thermal comfort maps, which are prepared with the use of Computational Fluid Dynamic simulation method, could integrate energy simulation outputs to uphold qualitative architectural design decisions. Mean radiant temperature maps were thus used to design the retrofit of a small educational building in Copenhagen. The thermal opportunities of movable interior partitions (operated by the users) could be estimated, providing a new layer of information to the designer. The applicability of the thermal maps within an architectural design process is discussed adopting standard energy simulation comfort outputs as a reference. The capabilities and the limitations of the method are appraised.