Jacopo Gaspari

Verified

Jacopo verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

Learn more

Verified

Jacopo verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

Learn more

• PhD Architectural Technology
• Professor at University of Bologna

Over 85% of buildings in the European Union were constructed before 2001, contributing to energy inefficiencies, material waste, and increasing socio-economic disparities. While deep energy renovations (DER) are critical to EU climate goals, their implementation remains hindered by financial, regulatory, and social barriers. Integrating circular ec...

The demand for green insulation materials is expected to grow rapidly in the coming years as the building sector moves towards carbon neutrality. Waste-based thermal insulation materials offer a promising area of research that aims to make a significant contribution to energy and resource efficiency while helping the building sector achieve sustain...

Climate change is increasingly affecting the livability and functionality of urban environments, particularly public open spaces (POSs), impacting user behavior in complex ways that require a comprehensive, multi-perspective approach to understanding. This study reviews current progress, methodologies, and findings in POS research by proposing a cr...

Understanding crowd behavior aids policymaking to foster livability and sustainability in cities. Spatial forms of the built environment can influence the way people use urban areas, thus exploring the correlation between them is increasingly deemed a useful support to address new city development or existing neighborhood regeneration. The study go...

As the construction sector is one of the most carbon-intensive and resource-intensive industries, the necessity for a transition from a linear to a circular economy is widely acknowledged. Aimed at facilitating the transition, several policy frameworks, operational tools and assessment instruments have been developed in recent decades. Nevertheless...

Climate change is causing unprecedented changes in precipitation, extreme temperatures, and weather-related threats. Without effective intervention, these changes are expected to escalate in the coming years, potentially causing substantial damage to buildings. Paradoxically, the buildings themselves possess the potential to both exacerbate and all...

The challenges that Bologna is facing belonging to the 100-carbon neutral city list are largely related to the quality of its urban fabric. The site hosting the IRCCS Azienda Ospedaliero - Universitaria di Bologna Policlinico di Sant’Orsola represents one of the largest green areas of the city. The renovation plan the hospital has launched represen...

The transition of the residential sector to a more sustainable energy system is regarded as a crucial action. Thus, significant efforts have been spent to promote deep energy retrofitting of existing inefficient assets. In addition, in more recent times, academics have begun to consider the potential for behavioral change among households to genera...

The present study provides both an updated overview of the most recent studies about low environmental impact materials for building retrofitting and meta-analyses of the most important features, such as the thermal conductivity, allowing to evaluate their insulation potential against the diffused and recurrent conventional competitors. Specificall...

Healthcare services and spaces are recognized as complex ecosystems where different user categories interact daily facing often urgent and difficult situations that challenge the established organizational and procedural models. The increasingly evolving needs and conditions influencing the processes affect the capacity to quickly adapt the availab...

Water is a primary resource for humans to live; however, due to the high urbanization and the effects of Climate Change, impervious urban surfaces have largely increased, which easily leads to flood problems during intense rain events, threatening the resilience of the built environment and communities. Nature-Based solutions (NBSs) are deemed as e...

The global energy crisis has spurred increased investments in energy efficiency and clean energy initiatives; however, the results have fallen short of expected effectiveness. Concurrently, population growth and urbanisation drive a persistent surge in energy demands, especially within the residential sector, significant to overall building energy...

Energy poverty is a significant social, economic, and health issue which increasingly affects millions of households worldwide. Both climate change and the socio-economic crisis have aggravated this phenomenon, making families unable to keep adequate comfort conditions at home because of economic constraints and/or dwelling inefficiencies. Consider...

The Department of Architecture at the University of Bologna is pleased to announce the Call for Abstracts for the International Conference titled Challenges for the NEXT Generation BUILT Environment to be held in Bologna (IT) on 9-10 May 2024. The Conference aims to stimulate a reflection on the next generation built environment within a context...

The recent literature emphasizes the significance of occupants’ behavior in shaping home energy demand. Several policies have been defined and tools and technologies have been developed to raise people’s awareness and encourage energy-saving practices at home, but households’ energy demand keeps rising. The thesis is that the fundamentals on this t...

In the last decades, significant effort has been put towards technological advancement in housing for energy transition. Massive retrofitting actions have been called for, and innovative technologies for smart energy management at home have been deployed. However, undesired energy trends in housing suggest that relevant factors have been neglected....

As the effects of climate change and urbanisation intensify, liveability and comfort in outdoor spaces decrease. Because of large spaces exposed to solar radiation and low crossing of airflows, courtyard buildings are extremely vulnerable in this regard. However, there are significant gaps in the literature on outdoor comfort in courtyards, especia...

Contribute to this Special Issue with promising articles on: - Climate Adaptive Building solutions. - Mitigation and adaptation actions at urban scale. - NBS and the water management in the built environment. - Water scarcity and its impact in the building sector. - Predictive and/or operative frameworks for climate resilient cities. Contact us if...

Energy demand reduction targets and sustainable design paradigms are fueling the search for more and more effective design solutions in the building sector, and new technologies and construction systems are being presented. However, each design solution has its own consequences for the environmental impact of the building. The use of Building Infor...

The need to cope with climate change effects – particularly those affecting the microclimate of the built environment – as well as the consequences of the energy crisis, is driving designers to prioritize adaptability of building elements as a key feature of new and refurbished constructions. Taking Europe as example, even in the best development...

Climate change has aggravated the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, particularly in flood-related hazards. Cities nowadays face significant challenges in stormwater management from frequent heavy rainfalls. Traditional urban drainage systems can no longer cope with large amounts of surface runoff; cities are searching for new ways t...

Transitioning to climate-neutral cities is difficult in practice, depending on complex urban activities and involving a vast range of stakeholders. Cities need ongoing support for assessing and implementing climate-neutral solutions. Following multi-country, collaborative academic workshops on this topic, we debate the use of new technologies and i...

Housing plays a key role in the world path to energy transition, and retrofitting buildings is a major asset to this end. Unfortunately, despite the supporting measures and incentives promoted in many countries, the renovation rate is still too slow. This is even more complex within some specific assets, such as social housing, which, especially in...

Il miglioramento dell'infrastruttura digitale previsto dal Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Re-silienza (PNRR) prospetta per il settore residenziale nuove opportunità di riduzione dei consumi energetici basate sul comportamento dell'utente. La dotazione di strumenti intelligenti per il monitoraggio energetico consentirebbe di migliorare il comfort indo...

Over the last ten years, due to the increase in frequency and severity of climate change effects, resilience in buildings has become a growing topic in the current global discussion on climate change adaptation. Designing both sustainable and resilient constructions would help to face such effects; however, sustainability and resilience in design h...

Designing sustainable and, at the same moment, resilient buildings is a necessity to reach the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. However, these two building design approaches-sustainability and resilience-are usually treated separately. Typically, resilience-improving strategies are placed only after a disruptive event and not at the design...

Housing is the main environmental impact generator (62 %) of the whole building sector, but it also has the greatest reduction potential. Enhancing its performance is thus crucial to sustainable development. Social Housing (SH) represents a critical asset within the residential segment, due to the recurrent investment shortage and several environme...

The ever-increasing frequency of extreme weather events and even more relevant structural alterations of temperature trends, draught periods and heat waves recurrency in many countries have recently showed not only the urgency to cope with Climate Change impacts but also the dependency on energy supply to maintain acceptable indoor comfort levels w...

Cities are facing unprecedented challenges driven by different forces. On the one hand the ever-increasing effects of climate change are impacting on the urban microclimate and environmental balance, on the other one social, political and economic issues are influencing the living conditions, the accessibility to primary services and resources, as...

The rise of energy needs in contemporary cities requires considering the energy use and the role of buildings according to a wider scale and perspective, especially in the framework of the current market fluctuation of conventional energy sources. Positive Energy District can be seen as a model for urban energy transition, capable of responding to...

This article examines the influence of the emissivity of façade materials on outdoor microclimatic comfort. The developed methodology is based on the collection of input data regarding the site, the geometrical and technological characterization of the building envelope and the definition of the associated emissivity, the development of alternative...

Adaptive façades represent a viable and effective technological solution to reduce the building energy demand for cooling while achieving interesting aesthetic effects on the building envelope to screen solar radiation. During the last decade, many different design solutions, including those based on shape memory alloys, have been experimented to o...

Designing sustainable and, at the same moment, resilient buildings is a necessity to reach the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. However, these two building design approaches-sustainability and resilience-are usually treated separately. Typically, resilience-improving strategies are placed only after a disruptive event and not at the design...

The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified a crisis that has already been underway for at least a decade: to stimulate recovery, the EU has put in place an impressive package of measures, the implementation of which is largely left to the national authorities. This would require a systematic reading of the territory, which in Italy clashes with the chroni...

Retrofitting the built environment is crucial for the achievement of the global sustainable development targets. Therefore, several measures, strategies, and technologies have been developed to pursue this aim and reduce the energy demand of existing buildings. Within this framework, the EU social housing stock represents a relatively small but cri...

The Department of Architecture at the University of Bologna is pleased to announce the call for abstracts for the international conference titled Challenges for the NEXT Generation BUILT Environment to be held in Bologna on 13 May 2022. The conference will consist of keynote talks and roundtable presentations on the key challenges dealing with th...

Huge efforts have been made in recent decades to improve energy saving in the building sector, particularly focused on the role of façades. Among the explored viable solutions, climate-adaptive building shells [CABS] consider promising solutions to control solar radiation, both in terms of illuminance and heating levels, but are still piloting thes...

The sense of uncertainty and fragility due to the effects and magnitude of global challenges we are facing (from the circumstances of the pandemic to the impacts of climate change) requires—much more than in the past—the capacity to generate a visionary and forefront design approach in the young generation, with an aim to stimulate their reaction a...

The authors wish to make the following corrections to this paper [...]

Since energy transition depends significantly on reducing the built environment’s energy needs, many regulations and incentives have been implemented globally over the last three decades. Despite some positive results, many scholars suggest that households’ behavioral change could greatly accelerate progress. People’s levels of awareness and willin...

The technological advances of recent decades and the integration of disciplines, such as architectural technology and restoration, are progressively improving design culture in the conservation of modern and contemporary heritage. The results of the study focus on the effects produced by a relatively short time interval (50-100 years) on a large nu...

The water storage capacity of a green roof generates several benefits for the building conterminous environment. The hydrologic performance is conventionally expressed by the runoff coefficient, according to international standards and guidelines. The runoff coefficient is a dimensionless number and defines the water retention performance over a lo...

Energy poverty is defined as the condition in which low-income people is no more able to face the costs of energy bills and consequently accept to live in cold and uncomfortable houses. In recent years the scientific literature about this specific issue has registered a significant growth, despite the problem is mainly approached from an econometri...

Many actions have been undertaken worldwide to cope with climate change and to effectively reach the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Top-down approaches, based on both policies for the development of enabling technologies and incentives to promote their wide applications, have been largely adopted in most of the cases. However, the potenti...

The renovation or the functional transformation of existing stock to meet the new comfort standards and energy demand reduction often requires comparing alternative technological options and designing solutions especially when it involves historical buildings where the main goal is usually to preserve the original image and value of the building. T...

The evidences of the influence of climate change (CC) in most of the key sectors of human activities are frequently reported by the news and media with increasing concern. The building sector, and particularly energy use in the residential sector, represents a crucial field of investigation as demonstrated by specific scientific literature. The pap...

The paper reports a methodology developed to map energy consumption of the building stock at the urban scale on a GIS environment. Energy consumption has been investigated, focusing on the shift from the individual building scale to the district one with the purpose of identifying larger homogenous energy use areas for addressing policies and plans...

While indoor comfort represents a widely investigated research topic with relation to sustainable development and energy-demand reduction in the built environment, outdoor comfort remains an open field of study, especially with reference to the impacts of climate change and the quality of life for inhabitants, particularly in urban contexts. Despit...

Building envelope design is rising in relevance and, within this specific context, the application of passive and climate adaptive building shells (CABS) is investigated as an opportunity for energy savings and improvement of users’ thermal and visual comfort. The paper reports a research concerning the climatic based development of a customized dy...

Global warming affects the built environment with relation to its own characteristics, form, density. Heat waves effects would have limited effects if most of the cities would not be affected by Urban Heat Island that strongly increase their impacts (particularly on urban population). Does the choice of façade colours and materials contribute to th...

Despite studies on thermal comfort being consolidated in the scientific literature, people’s well-being in some specific conditions and places, such as hospitals, requires to be further explored. The paper describes the methodological approach adopted to evaluate thermal comfort level and perception of pregnant women hosted in the obstetric ward of...

The scientific literature offers a wide range of studies evidencing the progress done in the retrofit actions dealing with the current building stock; however, renovations of hospitals are still an open field of research due to their typical complexity that is usually associated with a very challenging updating processes to maintain or increase ope...

Despite many progress have been done in the renovation of the existing stock, retrofitting hospitals and other strategic buildings still represent a very challenging issue both for their complex articulation and for the need to maintain acceptable operational level. The paper reports a research activity, run at the Department of Architecture in coo...

The increasing attention paid to the effects of climate change on the dense urban fabric of contemporary cities had led Public Authorities to develop local adaptation plans in order to suggest some effective measures to mitigate and reduce the impacts of urban heat island [UHI] and heat waves as well as to improve water management capacity. Among t...

Il settore edilizio non è, tradizionalmente, un vero e proprio mo-tore di innovazione sebbene numerose siano le innovazioni, tec-nologiche e non, che hanno contribuito alla sua trasformazione, in particolare nel corso degli ultimi decenni, e che continuano ad alimentare nuove tendenze (Antonini, 2007). L'innovazione può essere legata alla disponibi...

Energy savings and indoor comfort are widely considered to be key priorities in the current architectural design trends. Additionally, the well-being and satisfaction of end users is a relevant issue when a human-centred perspective is adopted. The application of Climate Adaptive Building Shells (CABS) compared to conventional façades offers approp...

The study is aimed at evaluating the potential effects of alternative design solutions with different green elements on outdoor microclimate with relation to a real case study application. The study has been commissioned in the framework of the follow up of a design competition, launched by the Municipality of Cesena to reshape a square in the hist...

In the last decade, the Smart City model has emerged as a reference concept in shaping the city of the future, mainly by strengthening the connections between grids, ICT, governance and people. In this framework, architecture and the building scale seem to be left in the background, as a residual aspect compared to the role that grids and ICT are e...

Climate change and the deriving impacts on the built environment certainly represent one of the most challenging issue for several key players involved in shaping the cities of tomorrow. This is not simply a matter of adapting buildings to new requirements, but rather to rethink the way the urban fabric reacts to new and sometimes unpredictable phe...

Studies on Outdoor Comfort in urban open spaces adopt several tools and software to simulate microclimate models, energy performances and the fluid-dynamics of winds. Air temperature, wind speed, relative humidity are the typical input data used by the software to evaluate comfort indexes such as the Predicted Mean Vote [PMV], the Physiological Eff...

The Bologna Adaptation Plan, recently adopted by the City authorities to address the way the city of tomorrow will coop with climate change effects, suggests some effective measures to mitigate and reduce the impacts of urban heat island [UHI] and heat waves. Among the suggested actions, the greening of in-between spaces of the dense built environm...

Considering the complex interaction between energy performance, lighting, acoustic and thermal comfort in contemporary design, building performance simulation [BPS] shall play a key role in addressing decision making process and technical choices towards optimized configuration during the whole design phase. The paper reports the outcomes of a case...

Resilience design strategies anticipate significant detrimental climate change to create optimal conditions to face the continuous and deep changes of urban environment, acting on the causes (mitigation) and on the effects (adaptation). The paper illustrates a methodology that combines technological and social aspects for the transition to resilien...

The European historic city centres are currently experiencing innovative approaches for rehabilitation of urban spaces afflicted by social and physical decay. The revitalization challenges are a consequence of the integration of contemporary technologies and solutions to achieve new requirements and of the impacts of socio-economic dynamics. Unders...

In the near future, the influence of climate change on the living conditions, on indoor and outdoor comfort as well as on energy demand will assume a more increasingly importance in defining adequate and effective strategies to regenerate and renovate the built environment while supporting the transition process to a low carbon society. In this gen...

The paper provides an overview of the key elements of a research project focused on the development of a multilayer platform aimed at supporting regeneration process at district scale particularly for what concerns the improvement of comfort conditions. The paper describes the adopted methodologies and the main stages in which the research is organ...

In the last decade, the Smart City model has emerged as a reference concept in shaping the city of the future, mainly by strengthening the connections between grids, Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), governance and people. In this framework, architecture and the building scale seem to be left in the background, as a residual aspect...

A considerable part of recent EU policies is currently addressed at developing effective measures to support the transition towards a low carbon society according to the principles and goals of Roadmap to 2050. In this general framework the links between the development of low-emission strategies and climate-resilient approaches to buildings play a...

The progressive worsening of the Italian school stock - in terms of comfort, environmental quality, energy efficiency and functional equipment - Is widely documented in several surveys, that indicate severe levels of inadequacy, particularly acute in the regions of Southern Italy. Over the last thirty years, the need to operate an obsolete stock ha...

Il paper si propone di sintetizzare i principali vantaggi derivanti dalla razionalizzazione del processo indotta dall’utilizzo di tecnologie a secco, nella riqualificazione dell’esistente, evidenziando anche i principali ostacoli all’applicazione su vasta scala di tali soluzionitecnologichenelle operazioni di recupero

: A number of studies and surveys at the EU level and Eurostat data show that the existing European building stock requires urgent adaptation to current and future needs. The renewal of this stock to meet energy standards and face climate issues will be one of the most important challenge in Europe to be considered in the next decades. This paper p...

The introduction of severe requirements concerning energy efficiency, combined with the need to boost retrofitting actions while reducing time, impacts and costs, offer new fields of action for pre-assembled and dry construction systems in the building sector, especially in the refurbishment of the residential stock. This paper describes the initia...

EU standards and rules con¬cerning energy efficiency in the build¬ing sector are pushing to achieve ever-higher performances. This also represents a strong driver for innovative construction techniques, inducing manufacturers to invest pro¬fessional and financial resources in the development of building components that can meet the highest quality...

Providing a coherent and realistic vision of the implications of the energy issue in the future development of our cities; places emphasis on the links between very specific and technical topics and the most challenging issues concerning energy savings and the transition to a low carbon society. A great part of the built environment in most Europea...

Recent surveys on the status of the Italian school building stock provide information on its seismic and fire safety levels, but not on the thermo-hygrometric conditions and energy behavior of the buildings, even if the former ones have a considerable impact on the use and health conditions of the indoor environment and the later one plays an impor...

In the current negative economic climate, retrofitting and rationalization of the existing residential building stock represent a viable and strategic solution considering two key issues: the improvement of energy performance and the adaptation of the dimensions of the residential units to the emerging needs. The fast increase in households consist...

The world economic crisis has further depressed the Italian production of social housing but it dramatically increased the demand of affordable rental dwellings. A refurbishment and retrofitting campaign of the social housing stock appears to be as a credible and effective strategy, able to be applied in the short term to bring this gap, at least p...