| Demonstration site | Real Albergo dei Poveri |
| Typology | offices, classrooms, auditorium, library, cafeteria, restaurants, expositions etc. |
| Useful floor area | 7 500 m2 |
| Promoter | Comune di Napoli |
| Other Participants |
 Giorgio Croci, Italian engineer
Didier Repellin, French architect
Nicolas Detry, Belgian architect
Francesca Brancaccio, Italian architect |
Innovation in planning and architecture
The architect team will retrofit this building using environmental management in order to make it energy efficient. The 3 upper floors will be design to benefit from the maximum of natural lighting (passive solar design) in order to reduce the energy demand for lighting associated with a good control of the overheating in summer.
Large storage will be created under the ground to store and reuse the rainwater to reduce the water needs of the building.
Definition of materials and components
The building is being refurbished using traditional, locally sourced, materials, whilst aiming to achieve high thermal efficiency and sustainability criteria in the selection of the materials.
The priorities that must be taken into consideration are:
Respect for the ancient building, its history, its already existing historical materials and its shape;
Use of traditional techniques in reconstruction;
Use of local, natural and ecological materials in the restoration.
These criteria are particularly relevant to:
Demolition of concrete walls of the upper floors that unbalance the building;
Reconstruction of the upper part of the building using traditional building materials that are sustainable and provide excellent insulation efficiency (see illustration).
Besides, high performance technology are used to reduce as such as possible the building consumption, and more particularly:
use of high performance lighting in order to be under the standard energy ratio for lighting consumption in offices
use of high performance gas boiler with low temperature floor heating.
Large storage will be created under the ground to store rainwater collected by the building. This will be used for toilet flushing thus reducing the water needs of the building.
The building is a massive structure and its walls have got very good thermal insulating properties. The restoration project aims to use this within the energy strategy.
Lighting
Improving natural lighting use: maximum of natural
lighting (passive solar design) in order to reduce the energy demand for lighting, associated with good control of overheating in summer.
Lighting control: use of high performance lighting in order to be below under the standard energy ratio for lighting consumption in offices.
Use of high performance gas boiler with low temperature
floor heating.
Air conditioning system is not compatible with the monumental building. Low thermal transmittance of the walls allows to maintain good thermal comfort conditions in winter time and in summer time as well. Ventilation is granted thanks to air exchanges through manual devices.
Integration of renewable energies
After a long and detailed architectural research, the architect team found that the roof of the building would not necessary be rebuild with traditional building materials like fired-clay tiles and could be realised in a very innovative way. Photovoltaic has been chosen for its multi-functionality:
PV module is a roof material,
PV module can allow natural lighting,
PV module generates energy.
72 kWp of roof integrated photovoltaic are planned for the first portion of the building and the project has been approved by the relevant ministries.
The total roof surface is about 30.000 m2 and about 3.700 m2 can be covered by PV
Tenders for about 520 m2 (Lot AB participates to SARA Project) and 430 m2 (Lot C) of PV are concluded. This allows the internal replicability of the project.
To be in accordance with the original building pattern, custom designed semi-transparent PV modules will be installed to produce around 88 125 kWh/yr of electricity.
The performance of the photovoltaic system will be monitored according the international standard CEI/IEC 61724 (Photovoltaic system performance monitoring - guidelines for measurement, data exchange and analysis) as for instance:
Incident irradiation Gi in W/m²
ambient and module temperature Tam and Tm in °C
Energy produced by the PV system Etu in kWh
Energy from Utility Efu in kWh,
The 3 upper floors will be equipped with irradiation sensors to measure the degree of natural light and with temperature sensor to measure and control the evolution of the corridor temperature, especially during summer.
