Refurbishment of a house in a historical building: energy saving, electrification and flexibility

Abstract

Buildings with architectural constraints and recognized historical values require a careful design process, aiming to combine the needs of conservation and the adaptation of the buildings to the modern use and its accessibility. The feasible interventions consist in improving the energy performance of the building envelope, in inserting efficient technological systems and using renewable energy sources where possible. The compatibility between the architectural constraints of the building and its more sustainable future use represents a crucial challenge. This work presents the interventions designed and realized on a small villa located in the Prati district, in Rome. Starting from the requests of the client, the primary objective was to create a comfortable house both in the winter and in the summer season, with widespread use of automation systems for managing the utilities. In line with the current energy scenario, the interventions were oriented to energy efficiency, the reduction of polluting emissions, the electrification of utilities and the use of renewable energy sources. The proposed solutions showed high gains in terms of energy saving even if the changes to the building envelope were limited by the desire to preserve the values of the cultural heritage. Therefore, a virtuous refurbishment can effectively respond to current energy efficiency goals.

Transforming a Historic Public Office Building in the Centre of Rome into nZEB: Limits and Potentials

“…A number of studies addressing the transformation of public buildings into nZEB have been carried out, while the interest in buildings bound for use as energy-intensive offices is scarce. This observation also derives from the work of the authors of this study, who have, for years, carried out research on the topic of energy efficiency of the historic building stock [32,47,[61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68].…”