EASEE

EASEE aims at developing a tool-kit for energy efficient envelope retrofitting of existing multi-storey and multi-owner buildings which combines novel design and assessment strategies, modular prefabricated elements, advanced insulating materials and new scaffolding-free installation approaches, to reduce energy demand, minimising the impact on occupants while preserving the façade original appearance. Particularly, the project will target residential buildings with cavity walls built before 70’s. These buildings require façade retrofitting for technical reasons or improvements in the insulation and energy efficiency to reduce the energy demand, while the conservation of the building appearance is necessary.

Buildings dated between 1925 and 1975 were constructed in an era where there was little or no consciousness of the need to design for energy efficient performance and therefore have the largest energy demand. A common feature of these buildings is that they are usually not forced by specific regulatory constraints for their refurbishment.

According to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, more than half of the European Building stock belongs to this category, including a total of more than 80 million buildings. Residential buildings represent about one third of these, 10 million of them being multi-storey buildings with distributed ownership. These types of buildings are widely diffused in European city centres and present common interesting features from an architectural and structural point of view.

In this framework, there is the strong need for the development of new modular and fault tolerant solutions for the envelope retrofitting in multi-storey and multi-owner buildings, ensuring an important reduction of building energy demand through off-site prefabricated components and simplified dry construction processes and installation procedures, while at the same time reproducing the original façade and reducing at minimum the discomforts for the occupants. Any novel approach that would also foster the introduction of multifunctionality in the façade system, like for instance integration of piping systems for solar thermal, natural ventilation or hydronics as well as sensors to acquire key physical parameters, would definitely concur to increase the overall cost-effectiveness while introducing more systemic designs interfacing HVAC and energy management.

The EASEE project aims at addressing the above described needs by developing a new holistic approach to energy efficient envelope retrofitting of multi-storey and multi-owner buildings which preserves the original appearance of the façade through a combination of modular pre-fabricated components which have the final appearance without additional wet finishing on site, novel insulation approaches and scaffolding-free installation. The ultimate goal is to develop an EASEE Toolkit integrating affordable solutions and guidelines that construction SMEs can apply to reduce energy demand while minimising the impact on occupants during retrofitting.