Bio-architecture
                                                                                    by Fabio Bertrand Elsa

    from Built Environment 1/99

Toward a Sustainable Architecture

by Cettina Gallo                                                                                           

Building construction is important for energy and the environment.
For energy, because almost a third of the energy consumption in this country serves for heating, cooling and lighting buildings and powering refrigerators and water heaters, irons and television sets.
For the environment, if for no other reason than the quality of indoor air (that is the product of the pollution of extemal air added to the pollution produced in the home) with effects that are often underrated on the health of the inhabitants (and in museums, also on the works of art exposed to it).

Saving energy while improving the quality of the indoor air is technically feasible and often also economically advantageous, but to do so requires overcoming a number of obstacles. First of all, the construction industry (though it boasts a number of excellent companies in this country) is largely a low technology industry and still reflects, after decades, the important role perfonned so long ago in employing the surplus of farm hands. To qualify and modernize this industry, providing it with the technology necessary to achieve better quality in terms of energy and the environment has become one of the major needs imposed by the global market. It is also true that the average citizen is now more careful about how he spends his money, but he seldom factors in the turnaround time on the values involved, or the discount rates. It is therefore hard to convince him of the economic advantages of an investment that would be obvious to an industry. And who analyzes his energy consumption? Who can suggest an answer? This is another serious obstacle: the lack of information that is both objective and realistic, about what can be done and what technology is available for it. But at the same time, it is not easy to figure more than a few months in advance and this is compensated for by a tendency in the opposite direction: to spend for something when it seems to be the right thing to do, when one is convinced of it beyond the mere numerical calculation. But then it is important to avoid becoming trapped in the folds of bureaucracy, obtaining permits, paying unreasonable taxes, encountering confliets of interest.

Hotel de la VilleNiger, arch. Lazlo Mester de Parajd.

The construction business in our country is an important industry for the economy (it earns 190,000 billion lire a year, plus another 150,000 billion in related industries) and employs 8% of the total workforce, up to 10% in the south. It is important to stimulate the industry and move it toward the goal of sustainability as regards energy and the environment.

About 54% of the work that is carried out in the construction business is devoted to maintenance; of this, about 36% concerns requalification and extraordinary maintenance.

H. Fathy, 'malqaf' ,Shabramant, Egitp(1980).

This share grew in 1998 by about 6.8% due to a clause in the Financial law of 1998 that provided the incentive of a 41% fiscal deduction on operations of extraordinary maintenance.
This action could be extended and expanded in the future, by raising the deduction to 50% for operations of particular value for energy and the environment.At the present time, 46% of building refers to new construetions, and it is expected that this activity will concentrate preferentially on the requalification of suburbs and slums, built with criteria of very low energy and environmental quality particularly in the sixties, that it is often more economical to rebuild rather than restructure.
The National Conference on Energy and the Environment, in its meeting in November 1998 on the construction industry, focused on a number of important initiatives:

A) The adoption of a "Conventional Code for Energy-Environment Quality in buildings and open spaces" for the introduction of criteria relative to energy and the environment in building regulations and other related initiatives;

B) Agreements for energy requalification of public housing, for the training of technical designers, for the creation of a data bank on microclimatic information.

As regards building materiali and components, a document is currently being drawn up in collaboration with the High Council of Public Works, ANCE, the manufacturers, UNIT, ICITECNR, etc., for detailed contract specifications introducing elements of performance that specify materials and building techniques that, other performance parameters being equal, consume fewer environmental resources, indicating among other things reusable materiali (particularly materials resulting from demolition) in place of new raw materials.

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