Iso-performance retrofit solutions adopting a Life Cycle Thinking approach

Abstract

Since the requalification of the existing building stock has become a priority, many national incentives have been allocated in the last years. To avoid a waste of such relevant economic effort, a deep and systematic integrated approach to the retrofit of the built environment should be considered, also pursuing sustainability, safety, and resilience at the same time. This may be pursuit only if a Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) approach is addressed, aimed at reducing costs and impacts in each phase of a building life cycle. A LCT approach not only may affect the material to be used for the retrofit, but it undermines the usual modus operandi right from the preliminary design phase of the intervention; for example, the structural details of the strengthening solution must be conceived to be easily off-site prefabricated, transported and assembled, and demounted and re-assembled in a different way at the end-of-life. In this paper, different iso-performance strengthening solutions are compared through the application to a reference case study considering the whole life cycle of the retrofitted building. All the considered structural solutions were then coupled to the same energy recovery intervention, allowing the building to shift from an energy class E to a class A1.