Energetic and Functional Upgrading of School Buildings

Abstract

In Italy, currently most schools require improvements to energy performance and indoor air quality. On the other hand, school buildings require structural assessment and strong renovation interventions to maintain their service functionality. Moreover, the use of spaces should be reviewed and redesigned to be more compatible with modern educational models, making the schools unique integrated spaces. Each space should have the same dignity and flexibility, meeting anticipated future needs and expectations and offering a positive environment that should support learning, teaching and recreational activities. The national government has recently launched policies and plans to face up to this situation, imposing some guidelines to incentivise the actions of local municipalities. The challenge as well as the aim of this research is to verify the possibility of combining energy retrofits with functional renovations as a unique approach to taking action, exploring the conditions and measures to create synergy. As a case study, school buildings in a medium-sized city, Castelfranco Veneto, in the north-eastern part of Italy were analyzed with the aim of defining a method of intervention on different functional layouts. In a first phase of the work, all 21 schools present in the area were analyzed. Subsequently, three groups of buildings with homogeneous characteristics in terms of age, construction technologies, and shape factors were identified. Finally, a case study for each group was analyzed in detail and a proposal for improvements to the energy efficiency and functionality was presented. In this chapter, one of the case studies is presented.