Rehabilitation of public housing buildings in a life cycle perspective

Planning the life cycle of a building, that is designing its resilience, is progressively increasing its relevance: the rehabilitation is considered a sustainable approach to the performance improvement of the built patrimony, which enables the extension of the useful life, compared to the more radical intervention of demolition and reconstruction. The most relevant aspects related to building performance regard the seismic rehabilitation of structures and the energy retrofitting of envelopes and installations. However, these are invasive and economically relevant interventions, that a private investor unlikely faces without specific normative or economic inputs. For this reason, the rehabilitation of public buildings and, particularly of public housing assumes a leading role in the building sector. The integrated approach of deep renovations leads to new strategies of life cycle planning and management based on the identification of environmental performance indicators with the goal of evaluating intervention alternatives, balancing the two – seismic and energy – strategies. An innovative approach to the seismic and energy rehabilitation of public housing in the Mediterranean area has been studied in the European research project Pro-GET-onE, coordinated by the University of Bologna. The research is based on the realization of an experimental exoskeleton to improve the combined seismic and energy performances. The solution also generates an economic surplus as a consequence of the increased living surfaces. This paper reports some results of the Life Cycle Assessment and the Life Cycle Cost Assessment related to this project.