Planning the integration of new technologies for sustainability: case study of a school building's restoration project in Rome

The research for sustainability challenges us to reconsider the way we think about architecture and offers great opportunities to renew its formal language with new technologies, as it did in the beginning of the 1900s with the introduction of reinforced concrete, steel and glass in modern architecture. We need to transform the architectonic envelope in a smart skin, a selective filter with the capacity to control the energy fluxes between indoor and outdoor environments, to change its working according to different weather conditions and to fully exploit renewable resources. This can be done with new technologies that must be integrated in constructive systems in order to combine the enhancement of energetic efficiency with aesthetic requirements, which is even more important in building restoration, whose landmark preservation principles are more restrictive. Planning the integration is the theme of the research, performed on a school building restoration project, built during the 1980s in the periphery of Rome. This building is a representative model in terms of time of construction, typology, constructive technologies, dimensions and energy consumption; therefore, it can roughly describe 60% of Roman schools, whose total estate is of 13.5 million cubic meters in 1,296 buildings.