The Importance of Sustainable Construction of Office Buildings and its Development in Italy and in the Visegrad Countries (Mainly in Slovakia)

For the real estate sector, environmental sustainability is fundamental not only for matters of social responsibility and contribution to the preservation of the environment, the paper sustains, but also because it can be an element that determines the property value and investors’ attractiveness. Recent years, along with the awareness towards energy and environmental issues, have witnessed an increasing number of tools for evaluating the performance of buildings from the point of view of sustainability. The paper outlines the diffusion of sustainable construction of office buildings in the Visegrad countries /Slovakia (mainly), the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary/ and in Italy, highlighting the necessity to focus both on energy-efficient new buildings and retrofits/refurbishment of the existing ones.