Sustainable Retrofit of a Social Housing Building supported by an Assessment Tool

New buildings and the retrofit of existing buildings must comply with indications and rules concerning specific environmental requirements focused on the improvement of the quality of the building context and of the areas used by occupants. ITC-CNR carried out a specific energy retrofit case-study which includes the assessment of the environmental sustainability of a building and the definition of construction and technological solutions with low environmental impact involving the application of renewable energy sources systems integrated into the building. The purpose of the work was to verify the possibility of bringing a non-sustainable building close to the best practice level of sustainability by applying efficient and effective technical and economic solutions, managed through the use of the national sustainability assessment tool: "Protocollo ITACA". "Protocollo ITACA" consists of a set of evaluation criteria used to assess issues such as Quality of the site, Resources Consumption, Environmental Loadings, Indoor Environment Quality and Service Quality. Starting from the performance of each criterion, the tool provides a concise final score about the overall performance of the building. The methodological approach used in this study involves the assessment of the actual energy and environmental performances of a social housing building located in Southern Italy, conducted by means of "Protocollo ITACA" contextualized to the regional characteristics ("Protocollo ITACA Puglia"). This analysis allowed to point out the building's most critical aspects and to set performance targets to be achieved by each assessment criterion. Afterwards, several design solutions were identified and validated with the "Protocollo ITACA" tool in terms of technical feasibility, energy and environmental efficiency, local availability, cost-effectiveness and with respect to the targets set. The case study building was finally reassessed using the tool after the application of the most efficient configuration of design solutions. The result of the experimentation allowed to provide the Region with feasible technical directions, justifyingthe cost/benefits of a design that would reach at least a level of environmental and energy sustainability better than that achieved by the standard construction practice.