Efficientamento energetico e conservazione dell'involucro nelle architetture del secondo Novecento

This paper introduces the EeTAC - Energy Efficiency and Protection of Contemporary Architecture project that focuses on the evaluation of effects and impacts of energy retrofit interventions on the building envelope of late twentiethcentury architecture. Recent research shows how energy retrofit interventions carried out in recent decades unfold into highly heterogeneous results, in which enhanced performance is sometimes accompanied by irreversible alterations to the material, formal and perceptual qualities of the architectural work. In this context, the paper argues that ex post comparative evaluation, yet still underexplored, can be a crucial analytical approach to make such impacts legible and discussable. EeTAC’s assessment framework is currently being applied to thirty case studies spanning different original uses and organised in a relational database, linked to an openaccess WebGIS, containing sets of records that captures original envelope features, retrofit strategies, and resulting effects in both energy and conservation terms. The evaluation is based on qualitative criteria articulated across six domains: knowledge framework and traceability; technical adequacy and compatibility; reversibility and invasiveness; impact on formal and spatial configuration; conservation of original envelope elements; and energy performance. The proposed approach is intended as a critical tool to support more informed and compatible future retrofit practices for late twentieth-century architecture.