TESTING AND EXPERIMENTATION ON BUILDING ENVELOPE UNDER CLIMATE CHANGE,

In recent decades, the results of Climate Change effects, such as global warming and the increase in CO2 emissions, have played an increasingly important role in defining concrete and measurable responses in the transformation of the built environment. The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) report notes that, globally, 2020 was the hottest year on record, along with 2016, even though carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels were 7% lower than in 2019. As a result, CO2 concentration levels reached a record high (413.1 ppm), despite a lower growth rate and compared to 2019. Understanding the interrelationships between these impacts and the built environment drives researchers and the various players in the construction sector to develop innovative technological solutions that raise the quality levels of Building Envelopes. It should be noted that the Building Envelope has radically changed the way stakeholders approach building design, becoming a pivotal element of construction that not only defines performance quality but regulates internal conditions independently of transient external ones. The focus is on the adaptive aspect of the Building Envelope, the operation of which is now delegated to technological control and performance response systems that can manage the complexity of energy flows involved in these relationships. The paper, presented here, is in this context and relates to experimental research, which addresses a design methodology for Building Envelopes, able to react to different contextual conditions according to adaptive dynamics to raise environmental and performance quality. The main goal of the research lies in overcoming the consolidated actions, both theoretical and operational, that underlie the "building-context relationship" through new methods of investigation to measure the effects of microclimatic phenomena on buildings in the Mediterranean area and, where possible, verify the outcomes of their biunivocal relationship. This is made possible through: the development of reliable phenomenological case histories under Climate Change in the Mediterranean environment; new models of urban settings that can be related to microclimatic phenomena; and sets of robust indicators useful for surveying the elements that establish synergies of climate change, both produced and "suffered". In recent years, the Mediterranean areas' climatic conditions, characterised by islands and heat waves, extreme rainfall phenomena such as water bombs, and increasingly frequent micro-typhoons, represent a critical point in the Building Envelope, becoming a specific field of application for research activities. This scenario also reveals that, as the complexity of the envelope increases, there is a need to devise innovative envelopes with 'high fluid-dynamic performance'. However, the behaviour of which is linked to the contextual variables with which it is related often escapes the expected qualities because these have been 'designed' but not tested in a simulated regime. Based on these assumptions, the experimental phases of the research were developed, having the opportunity to have an advanced Testing Laboratory, the TCLab Section of the Building Future Lab (BFL) of the Mediterranea University of Reggio Calabria. The combination of machinery and equipment allows the actual performance responses of Building Envelopes to extreme events to be tested according to standardized protocols. Specifically, the behaviour of a façade system was analysed to evaluate its performance regarding air permeability, water tightness under static pressure, and water tightness under real dynamic conditions. From the analyses carried out, the results took the form of test and retrieval protocols which represented real added value to the research, giving concrete form to applied experimentation actions with highly reliable results