The increasing concerns over population growth, depletion of natural resources and global warming as well as catastrophic natural events is leading the international scientific community to envisage sustainability as a crucial goal. The built environment plays a key role on the triple bottom line of the sustainable development - Planet, People, Profit - because of several environmental, social and economic impacts produced by the construction sector. The acknowledged need to promote a sustainable building market is an international high-priority issue as underlined by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Indeed one of its strategic objectives highlights to make cities and human settlement inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. In line with the 2020 Europe Strategy and the European 2050 Roadmap, energy efficiency and CO2 savings towards a low-carbon economy are regarded as ambitious objectives to be achieved for both new and existing buildings. Thus energy retrofit becomes a fundamental and growing research area to be investigated. This study aims to investigate the opportunity to develop sustainable integrated renovations that can improve energy and structural performance and at the same time provide economic and social benefits. A brief overview on the main characteristics and criticalities of the EU existing residential building stock is introduced. The work emphasizes the possibility to use envelope retrofit practice based on prefabricated modules as a potential measure to optimize the energy performance and increase occupants’ comfort and economic property value. The benefits of the investigated solutions are evaluated according to a multi-performance life-cycle oriented approach. Finally, a discussion on the possibility to apply the proposed methodology to residential high rise buildings in Leeds is exposed.
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)