ENVIRONMENTAL MICROCLIMATE MANAGEMENT AND RISK IN THE UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITE OF VILLA BARBARO MASER (ITALY)

Abstract. Indoor environment in heritage buildings can be cause of damage for architecture and artefacts which depend on several physical and chemical parameters: air temperature, relative humidity, volatile organic compounds, etc. How is it possible to evaluate their damage, or the risk of damages? How “aggressive” is indoor microclimate? The scientific literature proposes several different criteria for the evaluation of the risk of damages, especially in the field of museums, while there are few studies which take into consideration historic buildings. In this paper we propose an index – the Heritage indoor Microclimate Risk (HMR) – that allows to define the risk concerning the whole environment and not only the artefacts. Moreover, we propose its application to a real case study of a UNESCO Heritage World Site, obtained through indoor microclimate on-site monitoring and building simulation. The case study reported is Villa Barbaro, built in Maser (1554–1560) by the architect Andrea Palladio and registered in the UNESCO World Heritage Site list since 1996, as Palladian Villa of Veneto. The research is structured as follows: monitoring campaign of the microclimatic parameters; virtual modelling of Villa Barbaro and its validation (by comparing the simulated data and the monitored ones); construction of scenarios which can aid to guarantee the historic building’s conservation and the occupants’ comfort; definition of HMR. The innovative aspect of the proposed methodology is the use of a virtual building model of heritage buildings, to determine, through a single index, the degree of risk and the level of indoor microclimate aggression.