Contemporary sustainable architecture: knowledge, prospects and testing of EC windows

Currently, sustainability is a conscious expression of social demand increasingly attentive to environmental issues, and its implicit features were highlighted under construction, particularly the contribution that this sector has consistently given to the use of non-renewable resources and environmental pollution. The organization of the construction process leads to typical areas of modern research and experimentation, identifiable in quality and innovation of building materials. Among several materials, increasingly powerful, traditional - used in innovative ways -, the versatility of some glass, identifies the research undertaken by the Department of Architecture, University of Cagliari, with regard to architectural sustainability. Glass, as building material, has undergone a remarkable development. This evolution has allowed to limit the search in progress,finalizing the same experimental deepening in the Mediterranean, the results obtained through simulations with electrochromic (EC) glasses. Chromogenic windows change their quality of translucency to solar radiation, allowing the control input of heat inside the rooms. Their application for energy efficiency is of major importance especially because it allows a considerable reduction of energy expenditure for summer conditioning. The preliminary step of the study gave optimistic results on energy savings theoretically possible with their application. The main objective is to test the real performance of EC windows in a Mediterranean zone, by comparing the environmental parameters recorded in test rooms of different types of building. The data collected will process to define a coherent model of design simulation and verification in the regional trial.