Sustainable design of an eco-restoration for the functional recuperation of a historic building to be used as a town hall

The aim of this study is to assess both environmental performance and cultural, historical and social aspects of the refurbishment of a historical building. This work has been conducted within of an Italian project named “ARACNE”. The main aim of this project was to study and eco-design eco-friendly building materials with higher technological properties extending their application to a historical building restoration process. Within this project, the Fiorano Modenese’s Town hall (Modena, Italy) has been selected as case study. Furthermore, the recovery and restoration process considered the installation of innovative building products such as nanomaterials, i.e. nano-TiO2 functionalized float glass and nano-TiO2 polyurea resin applied on aluminum panel. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology has been adopted to model these issues. A preliminary definition of social, cultural and historical indicators (e.g. historical evidence, cultural instances, human well-being local traditions, social fabric, identification of the population in the analysed building and so on) in the Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) stage has been carried out. Moreover, preliminary attempts to evaluate the potential risks that nanomaterials could provoke to human health and environment has been taken into account.