Cities are complex and constantly evolving systems where changing social needs have always reshaped the built environment. Considering recent evolutionary trends in housing emergencies, amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic, and environmental sustainability goals, a rethinking of the building heritage is fundamental. This article aims to promote the conversion of buildings designed initially for nonresidential uses as a process and project strategy based on energy efficiency and a holistic and integrated vision of the circular economy. The methodological approach is based on two main phases: definition of evaluative parameters for the potential reuse of a building, and integration of the evaluation system in a BIM and GIS environment. The result is a tool for rapid automatic pre-evaluation of the potential conversion of a building into a residential space. Applying the developed methodology allows for a practical approach to the significant issue of sustainable construction, with particular attention to energy improvement and the reduction of environmental impact related to the construction of new buildings. The originality of the contribution lies in the systematization of various digital technologies to provide fundamental support for managing and transforming the varied and widespread unused real estate assets in a state of abandonment and degradation.

This paper presents an eco-architecture project in a public green space of the Ladispoli Municipality, located on the Italian shorelines close to the...

The carbon neutrality of the built environment plays a key role in fighting the climate crisis and fully realising ecological transition. In this field, the aim of the paper is to promote a new production paradigm that enables an integrated process from the design phase to the production of high-performance building components, to their “tailor-made installation” for the efficiency enhancement of the national residential building stock, reducing resource consumptions, costs, construction time and the associated environmental impact. The methodological approach is based on three key elements: digitalisation, production and performance. Recent technologies make it possible to achieve important goals, through the creation of the digital cataloguing of existing buildings, advanced dynamic simulations, improved energy performance for building stock and industrial production chain optimisation of the construction sector according to off-site construction criteria. This strategy was tested on a demonstrator building. The methodology application has made it possible to validate a catalogue of standardised insulation solutions that can be applied to 90% of the existing national building stock and that can reduce installation times by 60% and costs by around 30% compared to traditional techniques, while complying with the national requirements on thermal building insulation. The study is able to organise production according to advanced standardisation in order to meet the real demand of the market with advantages in term of production costs and economies of scale.

Building energy efficiency and urban waste management are two focal issues for improving environmental status and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The main aim of this paper is to compare economic costs of new building envelope structures designed by authors reusing and upcycling municipal waste in order to decrease energy demand from the building sector and, at the same time, improve eco-friendly waste management at the local scale. The reuse of waste for building envelope structures is one of the main principles of the Earthship buildings model, based on the use of passive solar principles in autonomous earth-sheltered homes. This Earthship principle has been analyzed in order to optimize buildings’ energy performance and reuse municipal waste for new building envelope structures in urban areas. Indeed, the elaborated structures have been designed for urban contexts, with the aim of reuse waste coming from surrounding landfills. The methods include an analysis of thermal performance of urban waste for designing new building envelope structures realized by assembling waste and isolating materials not foreseen in Earthship buildings. The reused materials are: cardboard tubes, automobile tires, wood pallets, and plastic and glass bottles. Finally, comparing economic costs of these new building envelope structures, the obtained results highlight their economic feasibility compared to a traditional structure with similar thermal transmittance.

The control and improvement of energy-environmental quality in buildings are responsible for almost 40% of the emissions related to energy and processes, and are essential to achieve the commitment of the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) United Nations (UN). This paper provides a support tool to planners and administrators of the territory for the identification of interventions aimed at the energy requalification of the existing Italian building heritage, mainly for residential use. The purpose of this tool is to reduce energy consumption by intervening on the building envelope with specific solutions that are identified through a matrix resulting from the study. In the first part of the study, an analysis was carried out on various factors such as the existing residential building, the building and construction types and the materials of the envelope typical of each construction period, which are critical for energy efficiency issues. In the second part of the study, the analysis of the state of the art of the insulating materials existing on the international and national market was carried out, in order to standardize the efficiency interventions of the building envelope. By exploiting the potential of the proposed matrix, and integrating it with Geographic Information System (GIS) technology, it would be possible to create a database containing information regarding the characteristics of the building envelope of the residential building stock and to identify a set of insulation interventions more suited to each specific case near Rome, Italy.

According to the Global Status report for Buildings and Construction, the building and construction sector accounts for 36% of global energy consumption and 39% of energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Specifically, the construction site represents one of the most significant sources of environmental impact, making it a pivotal element in achieving sustainability within the construction industry. The construction process and maintenance activities on buildings are, therefore, critical phases in which the construction industry is tasked with finding a balance between economic development, social well-being, and environmental protection to ensure a sustainable future for both current and future generations. To promote a construction model focused on environmental, economic, and social sustainability, this paper introduces a Performance Protocol. This protocol serves as an operational tool that allows both the construction company and the contracting authority to manage these aspects throughout the entire construction process. Digital technologies such as BIM and Digital Twin can take advantage of such model to integrate and develop sustainability analysis and simulation during the entire life cycle of a building. The use of digital tools is one of the challenges for the future of the built environment that needs to address not only the issues related to costs and management but also considering the social and environmental aspects of sustainable development.