Rooftop architecture reveals great potentialities in favoring a new interpretation of urban spaces and new ways of living the city. Thanks to the redefinition of the morpho-techno-typological ...characteristics of urban-fabric, the verticalization and concentration of the city and its skyline, rooftop architecture creates unexpected spaces in contemporary metropolis, encouraging the performance upgrade of buildings and introducing new functions. This leads to the growth of innovative social and collective models. At present, the process is compromised by a lack of consideration of the contextual frame and the ‘genius loci’, due to the absence of a regulation able to relate the quality of interventions to a landscape scale. This means missing an opportunity for rethinking urban regeneration.
The pandemic widened the questions on the typological, functional, and managerial inadequacy of the university housing, highlighting its limits and criticality. A polycrisis that suggests to ...critically rethink the spatial, organizational, functional, and managerial models, to reflect on the opportunity to open to the needs of new and varied users, not necessarily academics, but above all to broaden the reasoning to the policies tied to the EU internationalization programs. To this end, a new overall vision seems urgent, able to accompany the recovery in terms of innovation, and inaugurate, in competition with the use of the substantial funding of the PNRR, a new season of student accommodation interventions.
The concept of resilience can be applied to postwar buildings, which are increasingly exposed to seismic events. Today this threat can be dealt with through preventive practices, based on the use of ...adaptive exoskeletons: prosthetic systems that identify a field of experimentation marked by an undoubted social, environmental and economic value. This technique is based on a design that simultaneously allows seismic upgrade, energy retrofit, plant-engineering adjustment and the remodelage of those structurally, aesthetically and functionally obsolete and highly vulnerable residential buildings, on which resilience can activate targeted policies aimed at the preservation of human life, environmental sustainability and the rational use of the scarce economic resources available.
Located close to some of the most important historical areas of Bergamo, the nineteenth-century section of the former Montelungo-Colleoni barracks is set up as a strategic context to merge the old ...built environment with the more modern settlements. The report relates the challenge undertaken by a project of urban regeneration based on a functional mixité of high social, cultural and economic value. This starting from the results of the International Competition promoted in order to find the right balance between conservation and transformative actions, in the belief that the process and project aspects can play a central role in providing innovative responses to the recurring critical issues that arise in the complex transformations and in identifying effective forms of dialogue between institutions and stakeholders.
A well-known aphorism of the philosopher Rudolf Steiner, father of Steiner-Waldorf pedagogy, states that «teaching is not only a distantflow of information, but a warm relationship between two human ...beings, in which one is thirsty for knowledge and the other one is devoted to transmitting all his human and intellectualexperience». The expression «heating with its fire the deaf matter» is an ideal starting point to reflect on the book edited by Emilio Faroldi and Maria Pilar Vettori: not a tedious anthology, but a collection of authorial essays by "magisters" of architecture. The volume includes the contribution of fifteen authors, who have been able to leave "signs" to those who approach the art of Vitruvius. The articulated and rich reflection is presented in three different languages - Italian, English, Spanish - refl ecting the cognitive process that leads the transmission of knowledge: hybridized and contaminated, revealing cultural assonances and divergences among the authors.
The question posed by ever more ecological towns requires a rethinking of the aesthetics and of the nature of ‘grey infrastructures’ that deface the urban landscape and for which a new planning and ...landscape sensitivity is called for. The employment of vegetation as the project material can assist the mitigation and insertion into the high density context also in terms of recovery and requalification for a sustainable solution. Intervening in many environmental aspects, ‘ecotechgreen’ becomes the premise for a new environmental planning with which to transform towns into more efficient ecosystems. This paper presents partial results in the ongoing research into different planning approaches relative to these urban components.
Conclusions and perspectives Rooftop architecture represents an opportunity to support urban regeneration and concentration processes, in the perspective of reducing land use, encouraging ecological ...requalification of the existing, forerunning new vertical cities. An interesting case study is the Rotterdam experience, where the Municipality - with the operational support of De Urbanisten - started in 2015 a pilot project to test innovative methods for managing and controlling the development of the "top spaces" of city, exploring their potentialities for housing, environment and landscape. The plan is based on the definition of four categories, which are associated to buildings according to their position and their technical, structural, functional characteristics - "green" roofs for agricultural use, "blue" roofs for collecting and cleaning water, "yellow" roofs for producing sustainable energy, "red" roofs consists in the attempt to control the whole process through an organic vision, determining the destination of every single building in relation to its social and physical context, preventing the chaotic spread of interventions and favoring a clear development of 'urban decorum. On the one hand, the Italian situation is worsened by the presence of fragmented bureaucratic apparatus, which means a large number of decision makers - commissions, regional and local authorities, superintendences etc. - leading to stagnation and lack of incentives to innovation and research.
Nowadays, the transformation processes of the built environment, particularly those with the “common good” as their target, face complex regulatory systems organised in multiple areas, levels and ...scales. The different legislations often hinder the possibility of achieving the defined objectives due to the inability to interpret and translate the contents of these instruments into practice, and the difficulty of coordinating the tools as a result of different perspectives and goals. The research addresses this critical issue within the redevelopment and value-enhancement processes of properties confiscated from organised crime by proposing an innovative management model, which systematises the rules and roles of multiple subjects, increasing the social impact of requalification actions.
Si e dovuto fare ricorso a soluzioni emergenziali, come ridurre a un solo occupante camere doppie o triple, contingentare nell'uso gli spazi condivisi, dalle sale studio alle cucine comuni, ...organizzare programmi di turnazione per gruppi ridotti di utenti, inducendo molti studenti a confinarsi nei propri alloggi e far ricorso a servizi come il food delivery. Le unita abitative sono forzatamente diventate ambiti spaziali ibridi e/o multifunzionali, dove svolgere una pluralita di attivita: assistere a lezioni, studiare in solitudine, consumare i pasti, fare attivita motoria, ecc. Gli exchange student programs sono stati compromessi, costringendo moltissimi universitari a rinunciare all'interazione e integrazione con il paese ospitante (Cairns et al., 2021). Sul piano gestionale, una survey del 2020 ha inoltre confermato come sia i gestori di alloggi privati sia quelli universitari abbiano risposto alla situazione pandemica in svariati modi: il 40,5% ha permesso agli studenti tornati a casa di annullare il contratto, il 16,7% ha fornito sconti sull'affitto, il 23,8% ha concesso un periodo di affitto gratuito (The Class Foundation, 2020).
