Energy Catalyst 3103-9952 Caravel Press 10.61552/EC.2025.002 2025.002 Environmental Control of Urban Covered Courtyards in Mediterranean Climates – Comparison between different strategies https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5373-2414 CarbonariAntonio antoniocarbonari7@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8729-5646 ScarpaMassimiliano PlazaFrancisca Ignacia Méndez University IUAV of Venice, Cannaregio 4030, 30121 Venezia, Italy University IUAV of Venice, Dorsoduro 2206, 30123 Venezia, Italy Freelance Architect, Las Condes, Santiago, Chile 02052025 1 22 34 18 March 2025 20 April 2025 2 May 2025 © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Caravel Press. 2025 This is an open access article under the CC BY 4.0 licence.

Covering urban courtyards allows the creation of pleasing public or semipublic spaces, sheltered from bad weather and possibly with a controlled climate. The use of transparent or semi-transparent roofs, that allow daylighting, is a common solution in central and northern Europe, but not in Mediterranean climates, where it would cause overheating for a good part of the year in the absence of appropriate solar control strategies. The case study examined in this work is the courtyard of a former Venetian convent. With reference to it, by means of computer simulations, some types of partially transparent roofing and some solar control strategies were compared from the points of view of energy demand, thermal and visual comfort. Given the diffusion of this type of courtyards in the Italian territory, the simulations were also performed using the climate data of the warmer climate of Palermo. The better solutions appear to be those based on the use of dynamic solar control devices.

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