Incremental Integrated Holistic Rehabilitation: A New Concept to Boost a Deep Renovation of the Existing Building Stock

Abstract

The renovation of the post-World-War-II reinforced concrete building has become an urgent action in order to meet energy-saving and to foster safety among the European communities. In this context, in order to overcome the major barriers to the renovation and to increase the feasibility of a deep, sustainable renovation action, a new incremental holistic rehabilitation (IHR) approach is introduced. This new approach has the major aim of fostering a safe, resilient and more sustainable society by addressing the life cycle thinking principles and by implementing incremental levels of safety. In this paper, an IHR strategy is defined and applied to a reference scholastic building. Fundamental criteria for the selection of the proper renovation strategy guaranteeing the minimum environmental impact and the applicability to Reinforce Concrete existing infilled frames are derived. The results show that a holistic incremental rehabilitation strategy can represent a good answer to the urgent need of sustainable renovation of Italian and European building stock.