International Journal of Environmental Science and Development

Abstract— This research aims evaluating in what measure the proposed refurbishment solutions with architectural membranes can benefit an existing building and provide an energy efficient alternative to conventional reference building technologies for vertical extensions. In order to do it, an old building from the 19th century, located in Porto (Portugal) is taken as case study. Both solutions are compared regarding thermal comfort, energy consumption for heating/cooling needs using numerical simulation, which allowed evaluating the project from the environmental point of view, based on the energy consumption. The proposed membrane alternatives include conventional and non-conventional thermal/acoustic insulation and a membrane envelope option with vegetation on its external skin. The paper argues that architectural membrane refurbishment solutions can constitute an energy efficient alternative to lightweight conventional ones.

Index Terms— Architectural membrane materials, energy and thermal performance, old buildings, retrofitting.

Paulo Mendonca and Monica Macieira are with Lab2PT, University of Minho, School of Architecture, Portugal (e-mail: mendonca@arquitectura.uminho.pt, mrfmacieira@gmail.com). Joao Miranda Guedes is with Civil Engineering Department, University of Porto Faculty of Engineering, Portugal (email: jguedes@fe.up.pt).

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Cite: Paulo Mendonça, Monica Macieira, and João Miranda Guedes, " Energy Performance of Vertical Extensions on Old Buildings: Comparison between Architectural Membranes and Conventional Building Technologies," International Journal of Environmental Science and Development vol. 11, no. 8, pp. 390-400, 2020.

Copyright © 2020 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).