ALBERT

Description: Sicily is characterized by rural buildings, Palmenti, destined to wine production, which are scattered along the countryside and part of the local historical heritage. There are different types of rural buildings, but all have in common the use of ancient and well-established bioclimatic techniques for wine conservation and aging. Most of them were built with the double function of living space for the owner and productive spaces for all the activities correlated to the cultivations. Indeed, many rural houses, destined to the wine production, are characterized by wineries and wine cellars (the first for the wine production, the second to store the wine for the aging process). The growing production of high-quality Sicilian wines, very appreciated all over the world, leads to upgrade the ancient Palmenti to seek optimal hygrothermal conditions and, therefore, to guarantee high performance of the produced and stored wines. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the retrofit measures taken to comply with the energy regulations could affect the thermal behavior of a wine cellar constructed with consolidated bioclimatic technics. The results show the importance of not insulating the solid ground floor for maintaining suitable temperatures for the fermentation and aging of wine. This study can be useful for future analysis when comparing the optimal hygrothermal conditions of wine cellars located in homogeneous viticultural areas (with same climate, geology, soil, physical features, and height) in other parts of the world.

Description: Raw earth historic and contemporary architectures are renowned for their good environmental properties of recyclability and low embodied energy along the production process. Earth massive walls are universally known to be able to regulate indoor thermal and hygroscopic conditions containing energy consumptions, creating comfortable interior spaces with a low carbon footprint. Therefore, earth buildings are de facto green buildings. As a result of this, some earthen technologies have been rediscovered and implemented to be adapted to the contemporary building production sector. Nevertheless, the diffusion of contemporary earthen architecture is decelerated by the lack of broadly accepted standards on its anti-seismic and thermal performance. Indeed, the former issue has been solved using high-tensile materials inside the walls or surface reinforcements on their sides to improve their flexural strength. The latter issue is related to the penalization of earth walls thermal behavior in current regulations, which tent to evaluate only the steady-state performance of building components, neglecting the benefit of heat storage and hygrothermal buffering effect provided by massive and porous envelopes as raw earth ones. In this paper, we show the results of a paper review concerning the hygrothermal performance of earthen materials for contemporary housing: great attention is given to the base materials which are used (inorganic soils, natural fibers, and mineral or recycled aggregates, chemical stabilizers), manufacturing procedures (when described), performed tests and final performances. Different earth techniques (adobe, cob, extruded bricks, rammed earth, compressed earth blocks, light earth) have been considered in order to highlight that earth material can act both as a conductive and insulating meterial depending on how it is implemented, adapting to several climate contests. The paper aims to summarize current progress in the improvement of thermal performance of raw earth traditional mixes, discuss the suitability of existing measurement protocols for hygroscopic and natural materials and provide guidance for further researches.

Description: Buildings of the future are called to meet increasingly high-performance requirements and to ensure adequate environmental sustainability of the production and construction chain. This issue has stimulated a keen interest in the use of natural materials in construction. Among these, raw earth has proved to be particularly interesting for its intrinsic availability, sustainability, and recyclability. In Europe, the spread of raw earth building technologies has often been hindered by the lack of specific legislation regulating its use for load-bearing structures, even if in many countries, it can be noticed a widespread and well-established constructive tradition. Some transoceanic research experiences attest that unfired earth can be used, together with different types of reinforcements, to create seismic-resistant buildings. After presenting a review of the main raw earth reinforced technologies, the present study focuses on a novel reinforced and modular rammed earth construction made with natural or recycled materials, developing a technology with low energy consumption and low environmental impact, specifically designed for areas with high seismic risk. In particular, the work presents the results of a prototyping procedure aiming at developing a new seismic-resistant construction system that combines rammed earth with timber reinforcement elements and nylon/polyester ropes. These elements have a dual function: (1) they are fundamental components of the construction process (as they integrate the formwork system), and (2) they act as seismic-resistant devices once the structure is completed. In line with the performance-based approach required by the construction sector, the study aims at defining a controlled and standardised supply chain for rammed earth construction.