Sustainable building envelopes

The shortage of energy and natural resources and the current climate change constitute the main threats that the international community will have to face in the near future. In this paper, for a sustainable building in a Mediterranean climate area, the relation between envelope and energy has been considered during the life cycle of a simple building (construction phase and during operation). To do this, different analyses have been conducted in the life cycle changing different elements of the simple building: exposure, insulation, thermal mass and ventilated façade. To maintain internal thermal comfort, the energy requirements for cooling and heating have been assessed. Moreover the environmental aspects have been studied through the analysis of the embodied energy of the envelopes in the different cases. The present research aims to give a guideline to the designing of sustainable buildings and their envelopes to optimize thermal and environmental performances in the life cycle. The present paper reports same preliminary results concerning these studies.