Autenticità costruttiva, laterizio e spazi interni

La scelta di evitare i rivestimenti e di lasciare a vista gli elementi costruttivi, sia verso l’esterno che verso l’interno, si accompagna in questo progetto alla selezione di pochi materiali e alla semplicità e chiarezza dei rapporti tra le parti, con il laterizio che si fa struttura, involucro e rivestiment

Valutazione LCA all’interno dei protocolli ambientali multicriteri per il settore delle costruzioni

La ricerca affronta il tema dell’inserimento dell’analisi Life Cycle Assessment all’interno dei sistemi di certificazione ambientali multicriteri degli edifici (Green Building Rating Systems e certificazioni energetiche), sottolineandone il ruolo centrale, o ancora marginale, che la metodologia acquista al loro interno. I sistemi a punteggio dei protocolli ambientali, sempre più frequentemente, prevedono l’uso di indicatori LCA per conteggiare le prestazioni ambientali di un edificio in termini di impatti prodotti e risorse consumate durante l’intero ciclo di vita, ma il peso che l’analisi acquista all’interno dei criteri valutativi della certificazione è differente. A partire dai diversi approcci vengono messi in luce gli aspetti potenziali e critici nell’uso dell’analisi LCA all’interno di alcune certificazioni e le possibilità di sviluppo

Strumenti LCA di supporto al settore delle costruzioni

Il metodo LCA, grazie alle sue caratteristiche di sistematicità e scientificità, costituisce oggi per il settore delle costruzioni un riferimento sempre più diffuso ai fini della valutazione delle prestazioni ambientali degli edifici, sia per la misura delle prestazioni a valle della costruzione, sia per confrontare le diverse opzioni in fase di progetto. Rispetto a questa seconda dimensione, la peculiare complessità del prodotto “edificio” rispetto ad altri prodotti industriali ha orientato la ricerca del settore alla messa a punto di software per l’elaborazione di valutazioni LCA atti a semplificare il processo di calcolo, facilitando l’utilizzo da parte dei progettisti e agevolando quindi l’introduzione del criterio dell’efficienza ambientale come elemento di scelta fin dalle prime fasi dei processi decisionali. Il paper restituisce i risultati parziali di una ricerca volta ad analizzare le caratteristiche dei principali software disponibili sul mercato, con particolare riferimento a quelli più diffusi a livello europeo, delineandone criticità e potenzialità

The role of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and energy efficiency optimization during the early stage of building design

The environmental impact of buildings could not be minimized only by optimizing the operational energy since the reduction of operational energy frequently consumes more embodied energy due to the increase of materials and systems used for energy efficiency. Meanwhile, although LCA has been widely used to evaluate the environmental footprint, few studies explored its role in the early building design stage during which majority of the prominent decisions actually already have been made. This paper tries to offer a roadmap by incorporating LCA with energy optimization during the early design phase, to make LCA a more useful guidance tool for improving the design sustainability rather than a method only for the final verification. The workflow of integrating these two approaches is proposed. Several mainstream LCA software are compared and simplified LCA approaches are introduced for the implementation. In the same time, limitations related to this integrative work are also pointed out. For instance, the nature of design is a sequential processing work which fights against the demand of simulation software

LCA environmental impacts of Europe’s housing stock and prevention scenarios

Resilience is defined as the capacity of a system to cope with impacts by minimising their effects (through adaptation and mitigation). In practice, upstream measures on the causes, in terms of reducing the emissions or using resource more efficiently, should constitute the main action strategy for reducing the environmental impacts. The article describes the results of a research aiming at quantifing the average environmental impacts associated with the current housing stock in Europe through the construction of statistically-based representative models and the application of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method. Knowledge of the characteristics and the environmental performances of the building stock – particularly the residential building stock – is of fundamental importance to establish effective policies and priority actions for the prevention of impacts and the strengthening of the resilience

Buildings Temporary Yet Efficient

With the aim of valorising and spreading the environmental legacy of Expo Milano 2015, the Italian Ministry for the Environment has realised a technical-educational publication in cooperation with Expo 2015 SpA, Politecnico di Milano and IEFE – Università Bocconi. “The EXPO we learned. The legacy of a mega-event in a circular economy perspective” is a well reasoned evaluation about the sustainable achievements obtained thanks to the “best practices” applied during the Event and the “lessons learned”: from the construction of temporary buildings with energy efficiency and materials reusage expedients, and the prescription of green procurement requirements to waste management

guidelines for effective and sustainable recycling of construction and demolition waste

Directive 2008/98/EC on waste (WFD) provides that, within 2020, the preparing for re-use and recycling of non-hazardous construction and demolition waste shall be increased to a minimum of 70% by weight. Beginning from a screening of the current percentage of reuse and recycling, type of recycling (types of waste and destinations) and incentive policies in Member States of European Union-28, the research aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the Directive and possible ways of improvement through a Life Cycle based approach. In this paper the incentive policies and some critical issues regarding current regulations are analysed. Further ways to improve legislation are proposed as well as guidelines, which would have an effect on a local level and are aimed at making the recycling of CDW management more effective and sustainable through Life Cycle Management