Passive solutions for building energy efficiency represent an interesting research focus nowadays. In particular, natural materials are widely investigated for their potential intrinsic high thermal energy and environmental performance. In this view, natural stones represent a promising solution...

Recent research developments focused on Climate Change issue aimed at achieving Kyoto targets. In this context, an innovative methodology (officially recognized by WEC in 2009) is proposed to mitigate Global Warming by artificially enhancing earth’s Albedo. Such a methodology allows to...

Marble is a natural material, used in the construction field since antiquity. It has always been used to communicate monumentality and solidity. Nowadays new technologies permit marble to express new languages: particularly, translucent marble technology overturns the concept of solidity. The...

Cool roofs represent an acknowledged passive cooling technique to reduce building energy consumption for cooling and to mitigate urban heat island effects. This paper concerns the evaluation of the dynamic effect of new cool roof clay tiles on building thermal performance in summer and winter...

Most of the pitched roofs of existing buildings in Europe are covered by non-white roofing products, e.g., clay tiles. Typical, cost effective, cool roof solutions are not applicable to these buildings due to important constraints deriving from: (i) the owners of homes with roofs visible from...

Building energy efficiency is strongly linked to the operations and control systems, together with the integrated performance of passive and active systems. In new high quality buildings in particular, where these two latter aspects have been already implemented at the design stage, users’...

Buildings’ thermal-energetic assessment and the relative proposal of new technical solutions applied to both summer and winter analyses has a strategic role in increasing the year-round performance of buildings.

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the development and thermal-energy analysis of passive solutions for reducing building cooling needs and thus improving indoor thermal comfort conditions. In this view, several studies were carried out about cool roofs and cool coatings,...

Solar reflectance of buildings’ envelope and urban paving represents an important optic-energetic property for the characterization of building energy performance for cooling and to reduce the urban heat island effect. Together with the emissivity, it represents the main feature contributing...

Thermal infrared imaging is a valuable tool to perform non-destructive qualitative tests and to investigate buildings envelope thermal-energy behavior. The assessment of envelope thermal insulation, ventilation, air leakages, and HVAC performance can be implemented through the analysis of each...