Comfort at work: analysis, evaluation and design proposal for an industrial building in northern Italy

Advanced, dynamic simulation software powerful tools for designer to properly ˜ design choices, but the information required for their functioning is sometimes far from reality. In many cases, old or missing data file describe a situation far from the current one as well as the description of scheduled behaviour are necessarily approximations, especially in Mediterranean climate in summer when opening of doors and windows are extremely difficult to predict and simulate. On the other hand, the possibility of giving answers in real time represents an element of primary importance, having little or no time to dedicate to activities other than strictly work-related ones. Many times, design solutions to solve problems are not based on adequate analyses and simulations, but on personal experience, rough assessments and common beliefs that can lead to serious and unexpected errors. The analysis and simulation of an existing industrial building with critical interior condition in summer gave us the opportunity to compare the results of two different simulation tools, to test their ability to give affordable response to design proposals with different amount of information for the simulation. The results have been also compared to a rough hand calculation that is a typical approach to estimate the order of magnitude of the problem, but that in many cases, it is the only evaluation performed when focused on production. The comparison between different simulated project options and possible implementation proposals allowed us to think about the importance of simulations at the project scale. The feedback coming from professional experience and the discussion with the workers led to specific solutions that only partially fit the original proposals. The unexpected result is that some of the solutions implemented in recent years to mitigate thermal discomfort conditions inside the building work very well in intermediate seasons, but are negative on hot days when the criticality is maximum.