Energyscapes: Developing a Multiscalar Systemic Approach to Assess the Environmental, Social and Economic Impact of Renewable Energy Systems on Landscape

The drive for sustainable energy production is leading to an increased deployment of land based renewable systems which have acquired a widespread and relevant role in the transformation of landscape, sensibly affecting its perception by people and therefore eventually finding resistance at a local level. Within this context it is important to define landscape as “an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors”, according to the European Landscape Convention (Florence, 20.X.2000) and to envisage renewable energy systems as encompassing devices for production transportation and stocking of energy. Hence the impact of energy devices on landscape is multifaceted: including visible and invisible factors, large and small scale consequences, environmental, social, political and economic issues, involving stakeholders at different levels and, moreover, resulting in short and long term effects and thus requiring time to be considered as a fundamental variable. The complexity of the topic is though too often overlooked by unilateral perspectives traditionally adopted in the contexts of both policies and research. The aim of this work is therefore to develop a multidisciplinary, multi-scalar, systemic methodology which embraces the mainstream sectional approaches in an integrated multi-criteria analysis of the impact of the energy devices on landscape. Two case studies are disclosed to present the relevance of the methodology applied on different typologies and contexts. Innovative aspects comprise the drafting of criteria and guidelines to evaluate and select best practices

Relationship between energy systems and landscapes. Guidelines and tools for design and management

Landscapes undergoing conservation, valorisation, management and reconstruction policies, become a fundamental factor for the local/global development of natural, cultural, human and social potentials of territories. With the contribution of technological design culture, the research, having a strong multidisciplinary character, focuses on managing the relationship between energy systems and landscapes with the general aim of subverting and transforming apparent conflicts in synergies, in order to overcome a sectorial and segmented approach barely based on energy performances. Through the introduction of a complex multidimensional methodology of analysis and evaluation the goal of this work, is to develop standards of acceptability, meta-design criteria and guidelines for design, intro- ducing a methodology for multidimen- sional complex analysis and evaluation, to support Public Authorities

Why enhance and upgrade the public housing assets

The enhancement and the upgrading of public housing heritage is considered an example of the rehabilitation’s design potentiality and it is demonstrated through the identification by picking out some rele-vant areas of interest in relation to the built environment. In support of these identified areas examples of European best practices are shown emblematic having a programmatic, cultural and environmental character. The outlined strategies determine management, operational, financial and technological methods that shall permit its use in relation to contemporary dwelling requirement and they are outlin-ing the alternatives usable possibilities in terms of collective, cultural and also economic aspects at the same time. The building rehabilitation is understood as a design tool for the building and urban enhance-ment

Il progetto rigenerativo per edifici evolutivi ibridi. Resilienza attiva Convertibilità Valorizzazione

This paper deals with the enhancement of the project for the intervention on existing disused buildings with three sequential objectives: converting tertiary buildings to the hybrid housing function; regenerating buildings, providing them with continuous transformative capacity and making them functionally convertible; providing a housing model of temporary uage duration, according to the principle of House as a Service. Considering the temporal variable, the proposal defines criteria that guide the reconversion of buildings in relation to the dynamic needs of the different categories of users and stakeholders who are involved in the decision-making process and, through the hedonic price method, investigates the influence that the qualities attributed to the performance of the building have on the formation of their value, highlighting the perception of value and the acceptance of green performances