The Restorative Schoolroom of Gressoney-La-Trinité as an example of biophilic design integrated in energetic efficiency retrofit

Green building research is concerned with external sustainability (energy efficiency, life cycle assessment of materials, etc.) aimed to reduce only human’s impact on the environment. On the contrary, the Biophilic Integrated Retrofit project is devised to combine external sustainability (energy efficiency retrofit) with internal sustainability related to Nature positive effects on individuals (sensation, perception and emotional states). Inspired by the biophilic design, an architectural design model tuned with human biophilia, we realized in Gressoney-La-Trinité (Aosta Valley, Italy) a Restorative Schoolroom, i.e. a prototype of school environment where interfaces to stimulate the child's image of the school environment as a place of positive emotions and pleasant feelings, are realized in the most advanced retrofitting systems to improve energy efficiency. The Restorative Schoolroom is an indoor school environment that owns the regenerative characteristics of the outdoor natural environment in order to foster the learning process. The Restorative Schoolroom was realized thanks to three independent research projects developed by the agreement among University of Valle d'Aosta and a few business enterprises of Aosta Valley: Quintetto OLS, Quintetto and CCS Aosta. Individually taken, each research product is an advanced development of an existing product with a solid commercial potential, whereas together, they help in different ways to generate the Restorative Schoolroom, a high-end design for a new alpine sensitive architecture.