Master Thesis: Requalification of a schoolhouse in the area of Messina (Sicily), towards an high efficiency mediterranean architecture.

Innovation and tradition, technology and tectonics, energetic and structural design, they are the pairs we have condensed to develop our project. This abstract will depict a design for the architectural requalification of a schoolhouse located in Altolia, a small village in the surroundings of Messina (Sicily). By mean the energetic requalification of the existing building, the design of a new enclosure and the addition of a public space, we aim to create a place of aggregation for the community to fill the gap coming from the loss of identity suffered by people living in the rural areas of Italy.

Requalification of a schoolhouse in the area of Messina (Sicily), towards an high efficiency mediterranean architecture.

Candidates: Vincenzo Panasiti, Nicolas Ombres.

Supervisor: Prof. Arch. Gabriele Bellingeri

Assistant Supervisor: Prof.ssa Ing. Ginevra Salerno, Prof. Arch.Stefano Converso.

Nowadays, the major problems about civil buildings in Italy are the strong emissions of CO2, as 70% of them were built before the introduction of any regulation about energy saving, and the depopulation of the rural villages leading to the loss of that cultural diversity which is a specific peculiarity of Italy.

Altolia is the typical italian rural village, which history and tradition, culture and landscapes represent a valuable cultural asset which we intend to preserve and valorize to contribute to keep high the quality of life of the residents.

A recent report of the National Trust for Historic Preservation has highlighted that requalification should be preferred to rebuilding, as the lower environmental impact and the benefits for employment

We have decided to work on the schoolbuilding as, besides being a traditional meeting point for local population, it was the operations headquarter during the 2009 flood emergency, thus becoming a symbol of the village identity.

Altolia is a small village near Messina (Sicily) located among vineyards, citrus and olive tree grooves on the hills over the Giampilieri creek. The village name changed several times during the centuries (Actilia, Artilia, Artalia, Lartilia, Artolia, Altolia) which ancient meaning is “a place far away from the sea”.

The most aged portion of the village is located on the north side of the hill, which is the best from an hydrogeological and climatic standpoint. The modern side, which also includes a small settlement on the N.W. hillside, has grown along the main road to Messina.

In the 70s an housing project was build downline of the main road, near to the creek. Those buildings have been almost completely destroyed by the 2009 flood. The schoolhouse instead, even if built in the 50s in the same area, suffered just minor damages.

The schoolhouse is a two-floor building with a bricks bearing walls structure. It is located on the southern hillside (classrooms on S.E. hillside) thus absence of an efficient thermal insulation requires a large amount of energy for climatization. The large courtyard cannot be comfortably used by people as the absence of kind of shading.

The buildings are currently not only the part that produces more CO2, it is also the sector where the emissions reduction potential is greater.

We adopted several solutions, early introduced along the past centuries, to make the building comfortable in the mediterranean climate, where cooling is the most important and energy-consuming goal. The strategies are: protecting the interiors from sun radiation adopting very thick walls, integrate internal spaces with external shaded spaces, as obtaining an appropriate external microclimate is an important step towards the hygrotermal wellness.

We decided that the best approach to an existing building was the adoption of an external shell, preserving the building statics from any impact.

The design process adopted is composed by an innovative network of multi-discipline platforms based on advanced digital technologies. That approach could lead to the risk of developing several independent and inconsistent models.  Thus the first step was the creation of a core parametric model to share information obtained by analysis (energetic, structural, etc.)

To develop the core model we decided to use Revit, a software for BIM (Building Information Modelling) produced by Autodesk. The decision was driven both by the large diffusion of the software, and from a positive usage experience during the Solar Decathlon Europe 2012 competition.

The adoption, from the beginning of the design stage, of a parametric model allowed us to a strong teamwork, work in parallel on the structural and energy efficiency aspects.

Using a geometric 3D wireframe we have implemented the data interchange process between the graphic modelling software (triangular meshes model) and the FEM software.

The roof has been modeled using Vasari, esporting data to the FEM model using a visual scripting tool. In that way we have been able to optimize the roof surface energetical performances.

At the beginning of the design process we have studied the climatical conditions.

Our goals were to reduce the thermal loads on the building, improve ventilation assuring to have an acceptable thermal behaviour in the winter as well. The process was iterative, starting from assuptions based on qualitative behavioural patterns to be verified by software analysis and eventually revised.

Specific attention has been devoted to thermal insulation, taking advantage of the thermal inertia of existing walls.

We designed the enclosure using a fluid dynamics software (Autodesk CFD Simulation) with the goal to take advantage of natural ventilation

As far as the sun radiation is concerned the goal was to protect the building with a shield to absorb as much sun radiation as possible, We used the Vasari plugin: Dynamo, (a software that combines the calculation of incident solar radiation and the ability to manage and vary geometries parametrically), to implement an iterative algorithm driven by geometry paramethers to optimize the orientation of the facade and the roof, as well as the performance of the photovoltaic panels.

The climatization system has been designed and optimized using CFD Simulation, having the goal to avoid sudden temperature changes or excessive air flow.

Quality of lighting was one of the central themes of the design, which has been developed taking in account perception considerations (Juhani Pallasmaa, “Through vision we touch …”)

We adopted for each building zone the most appropriate artificial light, replacing existing lamps with dimmerable LED lamps. Infact the work of M.R. Bradley “Advanced Sensors and Controls for Building Applications: Market Assessment and Potential R&D” shows that adoption of dimmering, besides reducing children visual stress, can lead to 58% of cost reduction inside a schoolbuilding classroom,.

The design of shading elements has been driven by an accurate sun radiation analysis. The facade shades the direct sun radiation and diffuse it towards the building. Adopting the software Revit to perform the simulations, we have mixed diffused radiation with artificial lighting (using dimmering) to create the optimal equilibrium for the different daytimes.

To perform these analyzes we have made ​​full use of the Revit model, which as we have already said, it combines the features of architectural lighting to the model. From this analysis we were able to perform the mixed dimming artificial light according to our needs.

Or for emergency scenario.

We have chosen to use wood for the roof structure, as it is a natural material which behaves well in the high sismic risk environment of Altolia.

The facade is inspired to Buro Happold’s  ‘dragonfly’. It is composed by cells of aluminium connected by rivets.

The facade has been verified, according to Italian law, the deformation and stress to shear, moment and axial tension through the importation of a wireframe from the shared model.

In order to get a feeling of the actual design choices we thought it was necessary a real-time monitoring of energy consumption of the building and bioclimatic conditions. Usman Haque Director dell'Haque + Research, has developed a platform for sharing data called Pachube (now Xively).

Pachube allows you to send data collected from sensors all over the world, after the earthquake in Japan in 2011 Pachube was used by volunteers to connect all of the Geiger counters to study the fallout of Fukoshima radiottiva. Based also on the design of the environment ministry "the sun to school" initiative for the dissemination of knowledge for the sustainable use of energy and use of renewable resources devoted to secondary school. Increased awareness of different sources of energy production and environmental consequences of their use by citizens, built since the time of the school, may in fact contribute to the achievement of commitments undertaken by the country to national and international level on emission reductions greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental challenges.

The building will be provided with an Energy Manager System based on the Arduino open source framework, The Energy Manager will collect real-time data from a network of temperature sensors, monitoring both energy used by the building and produced by the fotovoltaic system.

The Energy Manager data will be available online to the building energy usage.

In the future, sharing Energy Manager data and requalifications actions about multiple schoolhouses in a nationwide database could create an effective tool for Public Administration for monitoring and prioritise requalification initiatives, as well as a learning tool for designers.

We have purposely decided to automatize only  the monitoring leaving to human operators the choice about reactions. Infact  automatization of reactions would be quite expensive. Moreover leaving to users freedom about the reaction to adopt in any specific case (open the windows, turn off some lights, …) would be educative for pupils.

We thank the architect Augusto Cesare, for help with the land records and plans of the school, the accountant Giuseppe Micali for logistics and local contacts, a forester in the province of Messina for the mapping and documentation air and finally but not least, the whole community of Altolia for the availability, advice and enthusiasm for this work.