Passive and green building design: a residential complex for the elderly in Andria (Italy)

The architectural and technological design of buildings needs a performance-based approach that takes into account the wider needs of the sustainability-oriented approach. Generally, building codes concerning the rational use of energy, set limits for the energy needs in winter that are evaluated by using simplified conventional conditions. In the Mediterranean area the energy needs in summer are significant and therefore energy saving strategies require the evaluations of building energy loads to be extended to cover the whole year. A wider perspective of the energy problems suggests the evaluation of energy needs over the whole buildings life cycle, involving production of building components (embodied energy), transport, construction processes, and the energy consumption concerning the life of the buildings life including maintenance, demolition or renovation. As a case study, in this paper we present the project of a residential complex for the elderly, located in Andria (a small town in Southern Italy), in which some of the above mentioned criteria have been applied. In detail, in adopting a bioclimatic conception of the whole project, the design team has applied building envelope technical solutions not only directly to the optimisation of energy consumption in winter, but that are inspired by the issue of sustainability.