How to Refurbish ‘80s Brutalist Architecture, Turning It into NZEB: The Case Study of the High School “Enrico Fermi” in Muro Lucano (Potenza, Italy)

Abstract

The brutalist architecture of the ‘70s and ‘80s has the responsibility to have promoted the creation of buildings that, to better adhere to the poetics of exposed concrete, have often overlooked any principle of environment-Friendly quality. Many buildings, as this case study, a school built after the 1980s earthquake in Basilicata, as USAID gift, in Paul Rudolph’s style, have the exterior walls made in exposed concrete, without any type of insulation and lacking of flashings, but of downpipe too, so as to resemble, now, a picturesque ruin; have roofing systems wrongly designed; windows partly insufficiently sized to ensure natural lighting, but partly without any protection against dazzling; internal walls not performing acoustic performances fixed by Standards, and all grater spaces (atrium and corridors, auditorium, sports hall) with reverberation time many times the standard value. The building envelope disperses 50 kWh/m³ year, so to be placed in the worst performance classes of actual Italian thermal rules. Becoming the conditions of use and management increasingly heavy and almost unbearable, this study detected the strategies and solutions by means of which to resolve the design faults, transforming the building in a NZEB eco-Friend, which produces from renewable sources the energy required for its necessities, recovering its original appearance and formal configuration.