Conference article

The Mediterranean architecture was characterized by passive solutions able to ensure thermal comfort conditions in the built environment during the hot season. This cultural heritage is almost disappeared; delegating the comfort conditions to artificial systems. One of the above mentioned passive solutions concerns the use of light colors to redirect most of the incident solar radiation. Cool roofs are a mix of these old concepts and modern technologies. The paper reports the results of a cool roof application in a senior recreation center; belonging to Roma Tre University. The cool roof was applied on a part of the whole surface of the roof in order to assess the difference in thermal conditions obtained with this solution compared to the original case. The experiment was carried out in two phases. During the first phase the building was monitored with sensors of temperature; humidity and solar radiation. The second phase concerned the creation of a building model inputted in a dynamic simulation tool used to evaluate the building performances due to this cooling technique. This study demonstrate the positive impact of the technology in terms of cooling and total energy savings as well as on the indoor thermal conditions in Mediterranean buildings.

Cool roof; Passive cooling; Reflectance; Emissivity