Energy performance of different office building envelopes within the Italian context

The work focuses on the assessment of the climatization demand of office buildings characterized by different envelope constructions within the Italian climatic context. Five envelope solutions are defined for each one of the seven chosen locations, according to likely construction ages. Considering the importance of the cooling energy consumption in Italy, the study specifically addresses the related loads by analysing the possible effects of some basic passive cooling strategies (shading and night ventilation). As a main result of the analysis, it is interesting to note that the buildings characterized by the lowest cooling demands are the old conventional ones, which do not comply with the most recent national U-value limits for the envelope components. The same performances are achieved by newly built insulated envelopes if they have high thermal mass, but only when the night ventilation strategy is applied.