A Project for the NZero-Foundation in the South of Italy

NZero-Foundation is a complex future-oriented student housing. It has been designed thinking about the characteristics of the place that surrounds it, the specific climatic properties of the Mediterranean region, and the needs and the behavior of the final users. The model of the building is created using a BIM software, which permitted to simulate the performances of the envelope, annual energy consumption, life cycle cost, daylight, and shading of the facades and, most importantly, permitted to use a unique tool for the different phases of the design management. The NZero-Foundation is a green building; the energy consumptions are near to zero, maintaining reasonable realization costs. To reach the target, it adopts different strategies to reduce heat losses during winter (buffer spaces, roof gardens, low-transmittance glasses and walls, led lights) and during summer (brise-soleil, natural shading, natural daylighting, high-efficiency mechanical ventilation systems). The complex collects rainwater, coming from roofs and non-permeable soils, for domestic and watering uses buildings, recovers heat from geothermal, and produces energy from photovoltaic integrated into the rooftop obtaining a balanced system between energy performances and an affordable realization cost.