The energy-environmental behaviour of the pre-industrial basic building: learning approach and applications

Eco-efficiency for the historic environment is decisive for energy-conservation, especially in the case of the Italian "traditional" urban heritage. The complexity and the heterogeneity of "the traditional dwelling" force to define the specific analytic tools and procedures to survey its Energy-behavior. The latest applications on rating the energy-environmental performance of historic buildings, such as Project A.T.T.E.S.S., US LEED, and GBC LEED have represented the reference points of this paper. The understanding of the specific Energy-environmental performances as well as the energy-lacks and losses, and the reasons why they bred, would be essential to set compatibly up a consistent conservation strategy for these fabrics today. The rehabilitation, the reuse, the updated development of the features and the configurations that the traditional dwelling has taken throughout its history within its surroundings, creating a local material culture based on the bioclimatic criterions, represents a proper strategy to achieve the suggested goals. Defining how these buildings have historically found the practical solutions for the bioclimatic-environmental peculiarities and how these features have been altered during the time, this work tries to suggest a procedure for a specific rehabilitation compatibly with the conservation of the building. The study has been applied to survey a "traditional" block in the old town of Sarno (SA) erected between the eighteenth and the early twentieth century. With the support of the building-stratigraphy and of digital ortho-photography and thermograph IRT surveys an articulate comparison has been developed among several structures that have been differently altered and changed in the course of time, considering some possible and sustainable ways for their energy-improvement.