ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO IMPROVE PRESERVATION AND ENERGY BEHAVIOR IN AOSTA VALLEY’S TRADITIONAL BUILDINGS.

Cléry Bionaz

Dipartimento di Architettura e Studi Urbani (DAStU), Politecnico di Milano, clery.b@polimi.it

ABSTRACT.

Greniers and raccards are pre-industrial rural buildings of Valle d’Aosta Italian region used for the agricultural products conservation and cereal processing. Refurbishment and re-use are perhaps the only way to save these fabrics from decay and abandonment, even if some retrofitting and energy upgrading techniques commonly used risk to strongly and definitively alter their consistency. The paper presents the first results of the PhD research, which suggests to deal with the re-use of those buildings through alternative approaches. Nowadays, it is necessary to consider building energy behavior improvement when dealing with existing buildings. Concerning historical heritage, this can be possible paying attention on conservative targets, above all, and carefully calibrating the re-use works. The approaches here suggested involve flexible, sustainable and tailored interventions, which want to preserve these delicate buildings and improve their energy behavior. Analyzing and enhancing the original climatic properties and characteristics of their construction technology, it is possible to design and regain specific solutions; considering their consistency inside the village “macro-area” permits to develop suggestions about differentiated and integrated new-uses. The approaches involve sustainability on the cultural point of view and consider also the economic and environmental aspects, which will be confirmed after the research results.

Key-words: preservation, traditional architecture, integrated and sustainable re-use interventions, energy-saving.