Environmental sustainability concept applied to historic buildings: the experience of LEED international protocol in the stable of Sant’Apollinare fortress in Perugia

Environmental certifications of buildings represent an important tool for monitoring the impacts of the whole construction process, with the purpose being the development of an environmental consciousness. The main goals are (i) the indoor environmental comfort, and (ii) the sustainable use of resources i.e. materials, energy, land, and water. These goals are relatively easy to achieve in the case of the design of new buildings, or recent construction. A different scenario is represented by historic buildings, which are typically subject to several constraints due their high cultural and artistic value. This article concerns the environmental analysis of a renovation process applied to an ancient building used as the stable of aBenedictine fortress located near Perugia, Italy. The purpose of the study is to show how the retrofit of historic buildings can be addressed by optimizing the ancient construction techniques and by introducing new technologies in the perspective of sustainability. In particular, this project concerns the application of the LEED Italy 2009 New Construction and Major Renovation, while waiting for the completion of a system fully dedicated to historic buildings, i.e. the GBC Historic Building™. The analysis of the building’s traditional characteristics allowed to identify where the actual protocol lacks, if applied to historic buildings. The need to merge both architectural and energy requirements suggested to pay particular attention on the choice of the envelope materials. Therefore, the choice of the materials gives the possibility of updating traditional building techniques according to the contemporary needs in terms of energy-environmental requirement and innovation in the design process.