Roberto Giordano

Sustainability of Living Wall Systems Through An Ecosystem Services Lens

The use of plants for shading the buildings having a pleasant ornamental effect is known for a long time. During the last decade, ecosystem services approach opens the way to analyze the multiple advantages that greening, included living walls, can provide to the urban environment. Regarding living walls, the main environmental benefits are heat island effect mitigation, noise pollution insulation, heating and cooling energy demand reduction, absorption of particulate matters, and enhancement of biodiversity. Living walls can also have a role in ameliorating physical and mental health and well-being and can be included in the urban horticulture initiatives both for food production and education purposes. Needing for recycled and low energy products for a greater environmental sustainability is also required in living wall systems (LWS). Therefore, the life cycle approach is considered as useful. The chapter is a critical review aimed at analyzing the environmental, social and economic sustainability of LWS for urban design. The multidisciplinary approach, carried out by agronomists and architects, allows to understand the problems and solutions for the improvement of the use of these systems in our cities. The research group is working on sustainable green wall systems that provide architectural and environmental benefits through the use of independent modular units, renewable materials, environmental friendly substrates, and native plants.

Progetto locale ecocompatibile di filiera di prodotto:pannelli isolanti innovativi in lana di pecora. A sustainable building product: advanced insulation panels obtained by recycling regional sheep’s wool

The article deal with an ongoing research aimed at developing an advanced self-bearing panel, fitted for thermal and acoustic insulation of buildings, derived from the reuse and recycling of local sheep wool. The development of a supply chain of environmentally friendly products (a self bearing panel made of 100% wool) encourages, on the one hand, the use of a material so far classified in Italy as special waste and, on the one other, provides new opportunities for a sheep farming that it is now going through an economic recession, with positive effects on the mountain and the hill landscape

A Procedure for Evaluating Natural Ventilation Potential of Urban Sites

Publisher Summary This chapter describes synthetically the work carried out by the Polytechnic University of Turin within the CE-funded Research Project PRECis, aimed at evaluating the effect of urban form on heating and cooling energy saving potential. A sensitivity analysis based on the parameter urban wind pressure drag was performed using the thermal simulation program ESP-r. The methodology used and a first set of results are presented. The contribution of PRECis is specifically oriented to evaluate the effect of urban form on the Theoretical Annual Energy Savings Potential (TAESPnv) due to wind-driven natural ventilation in buildings.