Energy-Efficient Shaping of Contemporary Buildings and Their Surroundings as an Essential Element of Modernization of Built-Up Areas (original) (raw)
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2011
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The construction sector consumes around 40% energy for the purposes of heating. The policy of sustainable development that has been implemented for many years also transfers to actions in the construction sector. The European Union is introducing a standard of buildings with a near-zero energy demand. This standard can be achieved only by altering the manner of the design, construction and use of buildings. Such parameters like geometry or the placement of buildings relative to each other and the structure of their layout on the site, on the scale of groups of buildings, also have an impact on the energy consumption. The goal of this article is to assess the improvement of the effectiveness of actions taken in order to lower the energy demand for heating of designed buildings meant for permanent occupancy. The assessment takes into consideration the conditions of sustainable development. The analysis covers the impact of the geometry of a building and development structure on the en...
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Bulletin of the Polytechnic Institute of Iași. Construction. Architecture Section, 2021
Due to the need of sustainable development of the building sector, it is important to increase the energy efficiency in buildings and reduce the energy consumption for heating and cooling. In a changing world, full of innovative solutions and technologies, passive strategies of vernacular architecture are more used to achieve life quality and eliminate the negative impact on the environment and human health. The vernacular architecture is based on the local construction materials and influenced by the traditions, culture and climate of the place. The “architecture without architect”, used mainly in housing, evolves over time and reflects the level of technology and historical context of the building. The core of this type of buildings was to use architecture to collect free energy from natural environment. Demonstrated over time, the inherent and timeless knowledge of vernacular architecture offers the basic level of comfortable living without the active strategies that include tech...
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The transformation of European existing building stock towards very low energy buildings requires a new approach. In this context, it seems reasonable to think that buildings should no longer be renovated individually but as part of a global energy system. Focusing on larger urban units may present some scale advantages and may constitute an opportunity to change the urban environment in a smart energy way. Specificities of Southern European countries are addressed. Due either to the climate or the life style, there are large differences in energy consumption per dwelling among southern and northern European countries. How much heating energy will be saved by over-insulating building envelopes if people do not feel the need to heat their houses in the first place? In addition, real energy use in buildings frequently shows major differences with respect to the predicted consumption. The definition of realistic solutions demands the availability of realistic predictions. A case of a residential complex in Portugal is used to illustrate the main questions and to conclude that moving from a building to a group of buildings scale may be an interesting challenge for policy makers to look closer in the near future.
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Energy and Buildings, 2002
The energy renovation of existing buildings is an important tool for the reduction of energy consumption in the building sector, the improvement of prevailing indoor thermal comfort conditions and also for the improvement of environmental conditions in urban areas. At the same time, it is a technical, economic and social problem, due to the way in which many cities have been built and the restrictions imposed by economic constrains that tantalise most countries in South-Eastern Europe, and also Greece. It applies particularly in Northern Greece, with its cold and prolonged heating season, where a series of studies was carried out since 1994 to approach the problem and develop viable proposals. Public and mixed-use buildings form a signi®cant part of the building stock and are therefore a primary candidate for energy saving measures, especially as they also play the role of a`pilot-demonstrator' for the private owned buildings. However, due to the low energy prices that prevailed over the last 10 years, and as energy saving measurements are capital intensive investments, little was done in that direction. The recent sharp increase in oil prices proved that this was a short-sighted policy. In the following paper are presented the results of a study that aimed to determine the potential of energy saving renovation measures, in a representative sample of buildings under realistic conditions, to evaluate the feasibility of these measures, and also the way in which this feasibility is being analysed, under the rapidly changing economic conditions. #
Economical and energy restraint affecting Europe lead contemporary architecture to focus on the renovation of historical building stock. In need of enhancing the energy performance of the Italian cultural heritage, the aim of this research is to investigate a refurbishment model that supplies strategies for non-monumental historical districts for the fulfilment of the general criteria of cultural, environmental and economic valorisation through an integrated design that combines principles of innovation and conservation, minimum intervention and energy efficiency. Operating on the refurbishment of historical villages in central Italy, this paper focuses on the refurbishment of the historical rural burg " Le Pagliara " (Opi). A strategic framework seeks to reactivate and expand its original productive character; it aims at recovering the architectural typology while enhancing energy performances and achieving microclimatic comfort, in compliance with regulated performance requirements and innovative models of traditional spaces in terms of access, management and equipment. State of the art The directive 2012/27/UE on energy efficiency to be adopted by Member States in each legal order within the 5 th of June 2014, sets common measures for energy efficiency promotion within the European Community. The most significant innovation is the introduction of energy refurbishment for existing buildings: Member States are supposed to adopt a long term strategy to mobilize investments for the energy renovation of the national building stock 1. In particular, this strategy should include: a review of the national building stock; the identification of effective refurbishment approaches in terms of costs, building type and climate zone; an evaluation based on the expected energy savings and the benefits in the broadest sense. Along with cultural heritage protection projects [1], European Strategy on the Urban Environment [2] focuses on strengthening urban communities identity and enhancing urban quality of life, as a major opportunity to focus resources specifically for energy retrofitting of historic centres and districts [3]. As pointed out by 3ENCULT European project [4], historic building stock is extremely heterogeneous and requires specific interventions to protect and enhance its cultural value, assess and improve its energy efficiency. In fact, according to New4old European project [5], historic buildings have been gleaned through a long-time experience of trials and errors, which has encouraged the selection of effective passive constructive methods to provide a comfortable state both for living and general use, thus contributing to good energy performance for different climates. To enable the process of eco-efficient renovation of existing buildings all operators in the market must be involved, starting from public authorities, to construction companies and designers. Something has to change not only in the perspectives of design and construction, 1 For public buildings, the Directive establishes the obligation to upgrade central government buildings and to ensure the improvement of buildings under major renovation in order to meet minimum energy standards. In particular, it specifies that each Member State, from January 1, 2014, must ensure that 3% of the total useful floor area of the conditioned buildings public property of their central government (and its employees) is upgraded every year.
Under the current Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, EU countries must set building energy renovation as a goal for future development of the cities. The 22@ district of Barcelona is one of the most thriving innovation districts of Europe with an increasing market for office buildings. In this framework, the present paper evaluates the effectiveness of a series of strategies considered the real case project of the energy retrofit of an existing building in 22@. In particular, the study presents the results of different scenarios of building retrofits, where simulations of dynamic envelopes are performed, with the inclusion of a conventional ventilated façade, Living Green Walls and Phase Change Material (PCM) for thermal energy storage. The different scenarios are compared in terms of energy performance, enhanced comfort and cost-benefit analysis. The benefits of latent thermal energy storage, improved thermal inertia and evapotranspiration of the vegetated elements are also assessed. Eventually this study helps understanding the feasibility of the implementation of the nZEB standard in energy retrofit of buildings in the specific context of Barcelona and Spain. 1. Introduction The massive urban development is altering the land surface by concentrating materials which effectively retain heat and create impervious surfaces, thus affecting urban local climate and urban hydrology. Moreover, tall buildings provide multiple surfaces for the absorption of solar radiation that is subsequently reradiated as heat, thus enhancing the efficiency with which urban areas are warmed up [1]. Building renovation is a main issue of recent European policies towards energy efficiency. Today's renovation projects have the challenges of improving the energy efficiency in order to reach the goals of zero emission in the building sector while improving their social and economic value, securing a sustainable use of resources [2] and minimizing the deleterious effects of buildings in the urban environment. The renovation of the building envelope, are a key factor in the energy rehabilitation of buildings and the urban environment. This paper describes three renovation strategies: living walls, ventilated facades with fibre-cement cladding and ventilated facades with PCM materials [3,4,5].
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The architectural and technological design of buildings needs a performance-based approach that takes into account the wider needs of the sustainability-oriented approach. Generally, building codes concerning the ra-tional use of energy, set limits for the energy needs in winter that are evaluated by using sim-plified conventional conditions. In the Mediterranean area the energy needs in summer are significant and therefore energy saving strategies require the evaluations of building energy loads to be extended to cover the whole year. A wider perspective of the en-ergy problems suggests the evaluation of energy needs over the whole building's life cycle, in-volving production of building components (embodied energy), transport, construction processes, and the energy consumption concern-ing the life of the buildings life including main-tenance, demolition or renovation. As a case study, in this paper we present the project of a residential complex for the elderly, located in And...
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The analysis of existing built environment shows that the critical values of the peripheral areas, together with the very poor energy performance of existing buildings and the levels of possible transformations they imply, may contribute, collectively, to formulate from light to radical proposals for urban and building retrofitting. In such urban contexts, the reading of urban spaces and the environmental evaluation of their use, both in relation to the intrinsic features of the buildings and with the outdoor spaces, take on a renewed importance. In terms of architectural structure, this importance is focused on the building shell, which can be properly re-thought by proposing new energy efficient technological solutions aimed at re-shaping the technical and formal aspect of the building. These solutions, although developed and conducted on a single building and at the building-level technology, thus contributing to re-function the spatial units, may also been conceived in order to positively affect the urban places and the surrounding environment, fostering a mending relation between the built space and the environmental boundary conditions.