Industrialised renovation: a successful installation of prefabricated façades

Offsite building renovation is becoming a reality in Italy, and on the 19th of March, in Greve in Chianti (Firenze), we could witness it.

Professionals of the construction sector, social housing managers, real estate developers could see the live installation of the prefabricated integrated façades on the Italian demo case of INFINITE. This is the first time that a live installation of this kind of façades happens in Italy.

The demo case is a social housing building from the ‘80s that is being refurbished to become a nearly zero-energy building. The integrated prefabricated facades are designed and produced by Fanti Legnami, which is a company from Trentino with decades of experience in the wood sector.

These façades, featuring an integrated system for winter and summer air conditioning and air exchange, incorporate innovative solutions that are able to lower the energy demand of the building, while producing energy from renewable sources. They are the result of collaboration between Fanti Legnami, Eurac Research, and European partners. Solutions include

• solar thermal panels (Serneo)
• photovoltaic panels (Sunage)
• ventilation systems (Vortice S.p.A.)
• intelligent windows (Next Sense)
• wall and roof insulation.

The innovative aspect of the envelope panel is the integration of these technologies, and also the fact that the panel is modular, versatile, and compatible with various components and finishes. It can be customised to adapt to different building types, and also to accomodate landscape and architectural constraints. The prefabrication aspect, that is the fact that the panel is produced offsite, in a factory environment, means that there is little disruption to the tenants.

That could be witnessed live: the installation took just a few minutes, drawing positive feedback from the 70 professionals of the construction sector that attended the event.

During the installation of the prefabricated panels Paolo Sottani, mayor of Greve in Chianti, gave a speech, followed by Luca Talluri, President of Casa Spa, Martino Gubert, Eurac Research, Marco Dal Mas, EDERA, Alessandro Caioli, Casa Spa, Marino Fanti and Gabriele Zini of Fanti Legnami.

The demo tour, organized by EDERA, Energiesprong Italia, Eurac Research, Casa Spa, and Fanti Legnami, continued in the afternoon at the Margherita Hack Room in the Palazzo della Torre in Greve in Chianti, Firenze.

Here, participants were given an overview of the entire renovation process – from BIM design to factory production, transport, and on-site installation – as well as the various technological packages to be implemented. This was followed by a Q&A session.

The day concluded with a workshop on integrating offsite components, systems and envelope, with Thomas Miorin and Marco Dal Mas, EDERA. Participants showed a great interest in the case studies and the potential for replication and scalability of the industrialised deep retrofit approach.