Natural-Based Solution for Sustainable Buildings

A special issue of Buildings (ISSN 2075-5309). This special issue belongs to the section "Building Materials, and Repair & Renovation".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 April 2025 | Viewed by 1077

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Mechanical, Energy and Management Engineering, Università della Calabria, 87036 Cosenza, Italy
Interests: building physics; building energy systems; envelope; HVAC; sustainability; renewable energy
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Mediterranean University of Reggio Calabria, Department of Agriculture, Località Feo Di Vito, 89122 Reggio Calabria, Italy
Interests: sustainable buildings; natural-based materials; energy savings; resilient cities; climatic change; sustainable agriculture

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Guest Editor
Department of Mechanical, Energy and Management Engineering, Università della Calabria, 87036 Cosenza, Italy
Interests: building physics; building energy systems; envelope; HVAC; sustainability; renewable energy
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Dipartimento di Agraria, Mediterranean University of Reggio Calabria, Loc. Feo di Vito snc, 89100 Reggio Calabria, Italy
Interests: sustainable buildings; innovative material for the building envelope; energy savings; resilient cities; climatic change

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Due to its intrinsic complexity, the environmental sustainability enhancement of cities requires a profound transformation and reorganization of urban spaces. It represents an ambitious goal to be achieved in the near future to promote the spread of resilient cities in which people’s liveability can improve. The diffusion of natural ecosystems and natural material components integrated into buildings goes in this direction, allowing for pragmatic solutions to effectively counteract the effects of climate changes and rationalizing the employment of energy reserves that currently find their final use just in cities. Ecosystems such as integrated greenery (even partially) and components made of natural materials in the building envelope find a natural application due to the abundant availability of surfaces and the high potential attainable in terms of the development of local bio-networks, to contrast the urban island effects, to properly manage heavy rainfalls, to improve the wellbeing of the habitants and the air quality in the city and to positively impact on energy consumption in buildings.

Dr. Roberto Bruno
Prof. Dr. Francesco Barreca
Prof. Dr. Natale Arcuri
Dr. Giuseppe Davide Cardinali
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • environment quality
  • urban climate
  • climate-neutral society
  • building renovation
  • heat island effect
  • sustainable design
  • carbon capture
  • natural buildings materials

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

16 pages, 9162 KiB  
Article
Sustainability Assessments of Living Walls in the Mediterranean Area
by Francesco Barreca, Giuseppe Davide Cardinali, Roberto Bruno and Natale Arcuri
Buildings 2024, 14(10), 3222; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings14103222 - 11 Oct 2024
Viewed by 832
Abstract
The evaluation of the environmental impacts of a living wall (LW) system cannot leave out the effects on the buildings’ sustainability during its life cycle. Consequently, to consider the embodied impacts of all the components, an LCA of the whole system is recommended. [...] Read more.
The evaluation of the environmental impacts of a living wall (LW) system cannot leave out the effects on the buildings’ sustainability during its life cycle. Consequently, to consider the embodied impacts of all the components, an LCA of the whole system is recommended. Therefore, this paper was targeted to evaluate the environmental performances of four LW solutions considering a combination of energy performances and system LCA. In the first step, the yearly energy consumption of a reference building equipped with LWs was determined through simulations carried out in the EnergyPlus environment. Subsequently, the LCA completed the evaluation of the environmental impact of the different building configurations. To quantify the effects related to the implementation of LWs, the results were compared to those obtained for the reference building without vegetation. The analyses refer to a real university’s four-floor housing located in the city of Reggio Calabria (38°07′21.4″ N 15°39′45.2″ E), which is currently under construction. The results confirm the benefits achievable through the LW integration, measuring both energy savings and the increase in the hours with indoor temperature within the well-being zone. At an annual level, the best LW solution produces 24% of energy saving and LCA highlights a limitation of 2.1 × 105 kg of CO2eq when compared to the reference case. These data confirm the effectiveness of implementing LWs as a reliable intervention to enhance building environmental impact, especially for edifices requiring renovation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Natural-Based Solution for Sustainable Buildings)
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