Retrotting with vegetation recent building heritage applying a design tool——the case study of a school building

Several researches show the environmental and microclimatic bene ts of the integration of vegetation in architecture; however the potentialities of vertical and horizontal greening systems to retro t buildings are still not much investigated. The retro tting project of the Barsanti Institute of Camogli(Genoa, Italy) is presented, a building dated back to the sixties with serious architectural and ef ciency problems, located in a considerable landscape area. The development and application of a design tool(process tree), for horizontal and vertical greened surfaces, allows to evaluate the potentialities of vegetation to retro t and to relate the encountered ef ciency problems and the climate characteristics with the choice of plant species, system, and technology more suitable for the speci c situation(of which environmental and economic impact are also evaluated) and to de ne a design approach for the systematic consideration of the many parameters involved.