ABSTRACT                                                                     -> Italian Site

Life Cycle Assessment of a Volkswagen car exibition and selling point - "Superauto Padua - Italy"

"Life Cycle Assessment is a process to evaluate the environmental burdens associated with a product, process, or activity by identifying and quantifying energy and materials used and wastes released to the environment.
The assessment includes the entire life cycle of the product, process or activity, encompassing, extracting and processing raw materials; manufacturing, transportation and distribution; use, re-use, maintenance; recycling, and final disposal".
Source: Guidelines for Life-Cycle Assessment: A 'Code of Practice', SETAC, Brussels, 1993.

LCA it's a method developed to measure the impact on the environment of an industrial product, along its entire life cycle.
The application of this method to the buildings is difficult, because of the complexity of the building process and the lack of basic information regarding the characteristic impacts produced by a large number of building materials and components involved in the building production.

An application of LCA to a building using the SimaPro 5.0 software has been made by this research, carried out during a stage at Enea (Arcoveggio's head office - Bologna, Italy)

The building selected is the typical Volkswagen car exibition and selling point, designed by the Volkswagen Masterplan as a "model" and intended to be built in different locations in a repetitive way.

By the LCA application to the Volkswagen Masterplan, the most critical point of the designed system have been identified, putting in evidence the performances to improve in order to reduce the environmental impact.
Based on this diagnosis, a re-design of the constructive system has been made, keeping the main elements characterizing its architecture and volume.

LCA has been applied again on its new design and a comparison has been made between the original and the modified design of the building, regarding the environmental impact produced by the different configurations.

LCA appears to be a valid means to estimate the environmental impact of a building, but the method needs a long process and demands a large number of complex analysis that are not easy to complete because of the lack of specific database for building materials.
A large application of LCA on the building sector seems unrealistic, especially for the usual process based on the production of a singular building in short time.