Side effects of green retrofitting on building fire risk.

Reducing energy consumption is one of the European Union's priorities. Therefore construction industry clearly needs criteria for designing new sustainable buildings and, above all, for retrofitting existing buildings in their energy performance. However, recent literature proves that green goals fulfilment often produces unexpected negative effects to the detriment of building safety and usability, particularly in case of fire, due to conflicting situations that may arise by the adoption of construction materials and techniques, and spatial layout, selected to increase buildings energy gains and mitigate their impact on environment. These studies are mainly related to new green buildings, but a focus on existing buildings is still lacking. Starting from current literature, and by analysing some green strategies in existing topfloor offices, the paper presents prevention criteria of fire risk, where some energy retrofitting solutions are integrated with space distribution and layout in architectural project.