ABSTRACT

The publishing of the Guidelines For Improving Energy Efficiency In Cultural Heritage provides a useful progress within a particularly critical area of the restoration project. The need to have a concerted tool was strongly felt, then the document will be more useful, the more it will be subject to an open debate, essential for examining in detail the proactive ideas content, in light of the research that scholars of different subject areas, have expressed in recent years. The purpose of this paper is therefore to review the Guidelines adding some sort of comment that contains other experiences or data collected from recent Italian and foreign studies, with the aim to broaden the discussion. Besides, the Guidelines provide the possibility to reason about recurring problems related to the requirements for the upgrade of ancient architectures (also for conservation purposes), treasuring the experiences and mistakes of the past (e.g. in the field of consolidation). The alternative is that sustainability needs are experienced as another strenuous fulfilment within a check list of imposed actions and not understood. To return to the theme proposed by the conference, to orient ourselves between heresy and orthodoxy. that also means rethinking the issue of energy efficiency in historic buildings, striving to get out of automatism (heat all and not only where it is needed, how much and when you need it) pernicious in the field of intervention that we deal with, and also beyond.

Parole chiave / Key-words: energy efficiency, cultural heritage, opaque and transparent surfaces, windows