ENERGY RETROFIT AND SUSTAINIBILITY. SOCIAL HOUSING ESTATE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN CLIMATE

Abstract

In the last years the global attention has increasingly been focusing on climate change and on the depletion of non-renewable energy sources. Recent analyses estimate that the building sector, with construction and activities that allow its normal functioning, is responsible for 50% of global CO2 emissions. In contemporary urban areas, post-war housing estates represent a great percentage of the whole building sector and the amount of new housing produced in EU each year is equivalent to 1% of the whole building stock, which indicates the importance of focusing the attention on the recovery of existing buildings and the optimization of their energetic performances. The paper will show the first results of a study that is being carried out on a social housing estate in the city of Palermo, aiming to offer a proposal for a sustainable renovation of the district starting from interventions at the micro urban scale for the improvement of the outdoor comfort. The district original design dates back to the 1970s and includes several social housing buildings that currently present a significant form of decay and very low energy efficiency. After the analysis of the context and the identifications of the problems affecting the district, the local climate will be investigated in order to propose solutions that can improve the inhabitants’ indoor and outdoor comfort. The proposals consist in possible greening scenarios aimed at verifying to what extent vegetation can affect the urban microclimate. For this reason, simulations were performed by means of the software ENVI-met, which has been essential to quantify the results of the different hypotheses.