Addressing thermal comfort in heritage Mediterranean housing buildings: a Modern Movement case-study from Spain

The energy retrofitting of residential stock is not always straightforward when it has to deal with heritage protected housing buildings. In Southern Europe, many examples that were built under the Modern Movement codes appear nowadays as obsolete in energy efficiency terms. The aim of the paper is to define passive strategies to improve energy efficiency and comfort conditions in a Mediterranean climate, whilst patrimonial features are preserved. Long-term monitoring and field tests were carried out and adaptive comfort equations are used to assess results. Thermal isolation of walls air chambers, changing windows frames, optimizing windows glazing and setting up periodic mechanical ventilation rates for indoor air renovation are the passive strategies considered. In general, simulation results disclose a better energy performance after testing retrofit strategies. Nevertheless, the potential decrease on energy demand is more noticeably than the potential improvement of comfort conditions.