Arquitecturas adaptables en paneles prefabricados ecológicos Adaptive architectures in eco-friendly prefabricated panels

The envelope of a building delimits the built environment from the natural environment. It marks the formal and aesthetic features as well a s technical performance of the entire building system. Specifically, the building components of the envelope serve the important function of passive systems for reducing the building's energy demand and maintaining indoor comfort conditions even in climatic zones with very high or very cold average annual temperatures. In the 1960s and 1970s, the vast program of postwar reconstruction and construction of public and social housing allowed for innovations and experimentation with prefabricated envelope solutions that are easy to assemble and disassemble in accordance with the new criteria of the circular economy. The paper focuses attention on the prefabricated construction system of Building 1B of the School of Building Engineering at the Vera Campus of the Polytechnic University of Valencia (Spain) designed by and built between 1965 and 1970. The building is part of a vast functional program with shared open and built spaces extending horizontally according to the architectural concept popular in the 1960s of mat-building. The building components of the enclosure and internal partitions are made up of prefabricated composite panels of the Durisol type obtained with a virtuous example of industrial symbiosis from mineralized wood production scraps and cement. After more than 50 years, this construction solution has proved to be durable and a valid solution for the sustainability of construction.