The new biobased architecture: prefabricated straw buildings
Nicola Preti
Timber Architect - Architetto di Verona che ti accompagna a progettare il tuo edificio naturale ad alte prestazioni con il legno e la paglia.
The trend is to bring the attention from energy efficiency to embodied energy and embodied carbon.
The instruments and the methods of monitoring and measuring these two parameters in the entire life cycle of the building, both during its construction and its use have been more and more developed.
In some European countries like in the Netherlands, Life Cycle Assessment evaluations are already active and mandatory for government building tenders but in Italy this has still not been implemented.
The base rule is to have a database to measure the embodied energy and carbon to allow designers to make LCA evaluations regularly during the design phase of buildings. Besides, there are still no platforms to collect and to reuse or recycle construction materials and their resale in order to facilitate circular economy.
At the moment, the only platform active is managed by Arpa Lombardia to collect and reuse cement. If you happen to know other such active platforms in Italy we will be happy to know them. There are interesting experiments such as the reuse of PVC frames that have a reuse rate of 30-40 years: collecting, shredding and recomposition of old window frames. Let’s not forget that the major energy and material consumption is glass used in the windows that covers 80% of its surface. This and many other topics will be discussed at the current Eurac conference in Bolzano where we will participate with our case studies of straw and wood buildings.
Our goal is to demonstrate with actual data the low impact that prefabricated straw buildings have on the environment.