“The underground spaces and comfort indoor: the case of “Sassi di Matera”

The underground architecture, like the “Sassi” in Matera, makes people to imagine life in the years and reconsider present life in these places “without time” and how to “live” them, again like in the “past”. This scientific research focus on the quality of indoor living in this particular type of architecture. Today indoor comfort is essential, because 85-90% of time is spent in closed spaces (rooms, work environment, etc..). Closed air, can be for people, more pollutant and harming than open air, as, inside we also have other harmful agents (germs, gas, dust and so on) whose danger is often undervalued. Today it is very important while projecting to consider first of all the quality of indoor air and comfort. The aim of this research is to analyse the thermal and hygrometer performance of the underground spaces and to show how the traditional mediterranean masonry offers, also today, a high level of comfort indoor. We did this with tests “in situ” monitoring indoor comfort (as low requests UNI EN ISO 7730 1997 e UNI EN ISO 7726 2002 , by directive CEE n° 106/89). The experiment was verified through the experimental applications in the restoration of two urban buildings in the ancient “Sassi” in Matera, reconverted into hotels, the “Locanda di S. Martino” and “Hotel S. Angelo”, that demonstrates what said before and how these building are suitable with the performance requirement that are required from the residence environments (European Directive 2002/91/CE and Italian low D.lgs 192/05 – 311/06) even if they are built with traditional technologies.