Optimisation of indoor thermal comfort outside the heating season

The most diffuse standards which define a low energy building focus their attention to the reduction of consumptions during the heating period. This approach, which can pay in a heating dominated climate, leads to straightforward guidelines for reaching this purpose and to very few indications to avoid the overheating during the rest of the year. In a context where both the heating and cooling demand play a comparable role there is a need of clear targets and strategies for all the year as the mentioned standards do for the heating season. This paper discuss this topic by the presentation of the simulation work done for a low energy building who is going to be build in the region of Milano where both heating and cooling demand represent a severe problem. The research was carried out with the aim to reach the most restrictive target for the heating period and at the same time to understand how could be possible to optimise the structure and the envelope of the building (ventilation, shading, glazing, thermal inertia) in order to control the indoor thermal condition outside the heating season most of the time by the means of natural forces which the context can offer.