Digital Atlas of Tactics to Designing Sustainable Factories

For a long time, the design of factories has been profit-driven only, while their detrimental effects on the environment, perceptual-aesthetic interferences with the surroundings, and social disturbances on local communities have been largely neglected. Despite a growing attention towards these topics, literature shows that there is a fundamental knowledge and tool gap on design practices for holistically sustainable factories, and companies are often unaware of both negative and positive effects related to the impact of their sites on the landscape. This paper presents a toolkit that has been developed to support entrepreneurs and designers in devising more sustainable factories through an integrated perspective, which is the great novelty of the approach. The article focuses on one of its tools: a digital atlas of design tactics. These have been mapped in sustainable factories around the world and labelled with an ad hoc faceted classification. Each tactic is then described in an info-sheet, which feeds a web portal. There, the user is assisted in searching for the most suitable tactics and mutual links with other useful strategies. The main potentiality of the atlas is to encourage a holistic design approach by highlighting positive synergies among tactics from different field

Architectures for Next Generation EU Cities

Cities are facing unprecedented challenges driven by different forces. On the one hand the ever-increasing effects of climate change are impacting on the urban microclimate and environmental balance, on the other one social, political and economic issues are influencing the living conditions, the accessibility to primary services and resources, as well as growth opportunities for the younger generations. The rise of a social awareness regarding these topics suggests how relevant scientific-based evidence could be and calls for additional efforts to bridge the gap between science and society, in order to stimulate a collective responsibility and due actions. The complex interaction among these factors inspired a forward-looking reflection not only on key drivers of change but also on possible future trends for research assuming an interdisciplinary and multiscale perspective. The book collects several experiences from different contributors working in many contexts and countries, but sharing the same projection to the future. Four key priorities are addressed: the resilience to climaterelated events and impacts, the energy issue with reference to both the advances at building level and the role of end users, the capacity to adapting components and systems to emerging needs, and the adoption of assessment and simulation tools for improving the design capacity within a circular system perspective. The book provides therefore insights, experiences, approaches to deal with current and especially with future transition processes which are expected to shape the cities of tomorrow. Thus, its ambition is not to provide definitive answers but to become a starting point for exploring promising research pathways for the next generation cities

Architectures for Next Generation EU Cities

Cities are facing unprecedented challenges driven by different forces. On the one hand the ever-increasing effects of climate change are impacting on the urban microclimate and environmental balance, on the other one social, political and economic issues are influencing the living conditions, the accessibility to primary services and resources, as well as growth opportunities for the younger generations. The rise of a social awareness regarding these topics suggests how relevant scientific-based evidence could be and calls for additional efforts to bridge the gap between science and society, in order to stimulate a collective responsibility and due actions. The complex interaction among these factors inspired a forward-looking reflection not only on key drivers of change but also on possible future trends for research assuming an interdisciplinary and multiscale perspective. The book collects several experiences from different contributors working in many contexts and countries, but sharing the same projection to the future. Four key priorities are addressed: the resilience to climaterelated events and impacts, the energy issue with reference to both the advances at building level and the role of end users, the capacity to adapting components and systems to emerging needs, and the adoption of assessment and simulation tools for improving the design capacity within a circular system perspective. The book provides therefore insights, experiences, approaches to deal with current and especially with future transition processes which are expected to shape the cities of tomorrow. Thus, its ambition is not to provide definitive answers but to become a starting point for exploring promising research pathways for the next generation cities

Sun-Shading Sails in Courtyards: An Italian Case Study with RayMan

Forecasts of a drastic increase in temperatures in the coming decades are driving the adoption of design strategies and solutions to improve the livability of urban environments. Increasing attention is being paid to the thermal comfort of open spaces by both designers and researchers. Nature-based solutions and man-made devices to improve the comfort of outdoor spaces during summer are spreading, but effective, easy simulation and design support tools for this purpose are still lacking, as most of the available software such as ENVI-met or RayMan cannot model such devices. As Phys-iological Equivalent Temperature (PET) is one of the most relevant and comprehensive indicators of Outdoor Thermal Comfort (OTC), this study aims to investigate PET variations of different artificial shading systems and propose a simplified methodology for assessing them through analytical sim-ulations with RayMan software. When modeling the shading elements, the trick adopted for this purpose is to associate different cloud densities with the shading provided by the screens, thus overcoming a gap that affects the software. The procedure is digitally tested in a covered courtyard case study in Bologna (Italy). Diverse options proposed by the designers for textile screening mate-rials have been compared, showing that these reduce by at least 1 °C the PET-gauged thermal stress. Beyond specific results, the main outcome of this study is the procedure developed to simulate sun-shading sail effects on OTC by means of RayMan, which can support designers in planning effective solutions for open space livability in summertime

An Expeditious Method for Comparing Sustainable Rating Systems for Residential Buildings

Abstract Rating systems for sustainability (R.S.), started to be largely used in the assessment of built environment since the early '90s,. The diffusion of these tools led to several benefits but also underlined some critical issues. One of the main hitches is the difficulty in comparing methods and results of different assessments, which have been developed at different times and places, following specific approaches. This paper aims at proposing a method to compare different R.S. and their outcomes, by mapping what and how much they have in common, to identify a shared core of elements that could be considered the most representative in assessing the sustainability of the built environment, focusing particularly on residential buildings. The predictable loss of accuracy due to the reduction of the considered indicators is analyzed, to define an acceptable level of reliability of the resulting concise R.S., whose simplification can, however, help to facilitate its wider application

Universities and planning activities

The Council of State Decision of 3 June 2011 reiterated some limitations on planning activities carried out by the University, more restrictive than those already formulated by other courts. The grounds for the Decision, however, indicate some methods that the University can adopt in order to apply its research to real cases, particularly in the field of architecture. The provision of services, including planning, to a PA is acceptable both if provided directly within the framework of public-public cooperation agreements and if conducted through companies, set up by the University, that work for public bodies in accordance with the “in-house” model. With the provision, however, that the collaboration activities are strictly functional to the University’s institutional responsibilities, and therefore that they have a strong scientific research component

Energy Transition at Home: A Survey on the Data and Practices That Lead to a Change in Household Energy Behavior

Since energy transition depends significantly on reducing the built environment’s energy needs, many regulations and incentives have been implemented globally over the last three decades. Despite some positive results, many scholars suggest that households’ behavioral change could greatly accelerate progress. People’s levels of awareness and willingness to change, as well as the provision of feedback technologies, are important factors affecting the process. In spite of the extent of this body of literature, household consumption keeps rising. Our thesis is that the subject has been investigated without considering some important correlations among factors. Therefore, this study developed a survey to investigate actual consumers’ perspectives on the topic by combining people’s awareness of energy use, interaction with metering devices, and user motivation into a coherent framework. A testing session involving 500 people was held as a validation phase for a future large-scale launch of the questionnaire. The test yielded some early outcomes on how people become more interested in changing as they gain more knowledge and are offered suggestions. However, despite their supposedly advanced knowledge as educators and students, the sample’s level of awareness was low, suggesting that a more user-centered approach is needed for wide-scale progress

Outdoor Wellbeing and Quality of Life: A Scientific Literature Review on Thermal Comfort

While indoor comfort represents a widely investigated research topic with relation to sustainable development and energy-demand reduction in the built environment, outdoor comfort remains an open field of study, especially with reference to the impacts of climate change and the quality of life for inhabitants, particularly in urban contexts. Despite the relevant eorts spent in the last few decades to advance the understanding of phenomena and the knowledge in this specific field, which obtained much evidence for the topic\u2019s relevance, a comprehensive picture of the studies, as well as a classification of the interconnected subjects and outcomes, is still lacking. This paper reports the outcomes of a literature review aimed at screening the available resources dealing with outdoor thermal comfort, in order to provide a state-of-the-art review that identifies the main topics focused by the researchers, as well as the barriers in defining suitable indexes for assessing thermal comfort in outdoor environments. Although several accurate models and software are available to quantify outdoor human comfort, the evocated state of mind of the final user still remains at the core of this uncertain process

A GIS-Based Methodology for Speedy Energy Efficiency Mapping: A Case Study in Bologna

The paper reports a methodology developed to map energy consumption of the building stock at the urban scale on a GIS environment. Energy consumption has been investigated, focusing on the shift from the individual building scale to the district one with the purpose of identifying larger homogenous energy use areas for addressing policies and plans to improve the quality and the performance levels at the city scale. The urban planning zoning concept was extended to the energy issue to include the energy behavior of each zone that depends on the performance of its individual buildings. The methodology generates GIS maps providing a district scale visualization of energy consumption according to shared criteria. A case study in Bologna city (Italy) is provided. In the specific case, the last update of Emilia-Romagna regional urban planning regulation required a mapping action regarding energy efficiency of homogeneous urban portions defined by the General Urban Plan. The main achieved results are (a) a methodology to identify homogeneous areas for analyzing energy consumption; (b) an updated energy map of Bologna Municipality

The crisis in figures

Economic data on construction market performance culled from recently published analysis and studies, have served to highlight and quantify the phenomena that have driven the negative global economic downturn, affecting the construction sector in particular, over the last two years, with obvious repercussions also for Italy. Although there were a few rallying signs that the downward trend was easing off slightly in early 2011 – both in Europe and, albeit rather more hesitantly, in Italy – those tenuous hopes for recovery were not backed up by actual statistical indicators, potentially providing some indication of promising development trends. Of the few emerging dynamics in the American market, which is recovering more swiftly than in Europe, there seems to have been a marked increase in the production of sustainable or “green” buildings, which are taking over increasingly larger slices of the market