Renewable energy sources technologies in the built environment: a new operating scenery in Italy

The European 2020 goals have led to an updating of Italian national and regional rules, aimed to speed up the process of development of renewable energy source technologies in the whole country. The new rules have been based on some strategic action lines, such as the regional burden sharing of national 2020 goals, the promotion of economic and/or fiscal incentives, the simplification of the procedures for the works permission, etc.. A leading role in energy strategies has been assigned to the micro-production of energy from renewable sources. This involves the issue of the R.E.S. technologies integration in built environment, referring to the Italian territory, which is characterized by a widespread presence of ancient towns and landscapes with a great cultural and environmental importance. The paper presents some of the outcomes of a national funded research on the renewable energy sources technologies integration into “sensible” built environments. The new model of process, as it comes from the new national and regional procedural guide lines and from other current regulations, is described and analyzed. Then, the main theoretical and practical problems are put in evidence, regarding both the latent conflict between energy saving and cultural elements preservation goals; and the change of the roles and responsibilities of the different stakeholders involved in the process (people, local administrators, “national trust” bodies, building owners, designers, producers). Finally, it brings out the need to offset the process of deregulation of the minor works in "sensitive" areas by means of an extensive range of strategies and actions, aimed to increase the stakeholders' education, involving and empowerment; in order to effectively pursue the maximum exploitation of the potential renewable energy, ensuring at the same time the protection of the areas of intervention

Memorie di guerra. Verso la riapertura del Bunker della Prefettura e della Torre delle Sirene di Milano

L’articolo tratta del percorso avviato da Città Metropolitana di Milano, in sinergia con il Politecnico di Milano, per restituire alla cittadinanza la Torre delle Sirene – sede della centrale di comando dell’allarme antiaereo della città di Milano – e il Bunker della Prefettura. Si tratta di due manufatti, comunicanti tra loro, particolarmente significativi per il ricordo della seconda guerra mondiale e, soprattutto, della vita quotidiana dei civili sotto assedio, condizione che ancora oggi accomuna numerose popolazioni nel mondo. Entrambi gli edifici sono in stato di abbandono e degrado da diversi anni, ma permangono ancora diverse tracce del passato utilizzo. Il percorso di riapertura appare oggi complesso, sia per i caratteri tecno-tipologici e localizzativi, che per la mancanza di risorse dedicate. L’obiettivo è la trasformazione dell’ex-centro nevralgico del sistema milanese di allerta antiaerea, in epicentro di un nuovo sistema di allerta collettivo sul tema della guerra, che operi proprio attraverso la memoria degli eventi passati. Inoltre, questo potrebbe divenire il polo del più ampio e diffuso sistema del patrimonio dei rifugi cittadini: un network di beni tangibili e intangibili, organizzati secondo una logica comune di valorizzazione della memoria, per far crescere la cultura della pace e realizzare un itinerario culturale nella città fondato sui valori della Storia.The paper concerns the project, promoted by Metropolitan city and Polytechnic university of Milan, of returning to public use Torre delle Sirene – seat of the Milan air-raid alert control unit – and Bunker della Prefettura. Two buildings connected to each other and very significant as memories of the Second World War and, most of all, of the ordinary life of civilian people under siege, a condition still regarding so many people around the world at present. Both the buildings have been neglected and deteriorated since a few years, but they still preserve traces of the past use. The reopening project is difficult due both to the typological and location characters of the buildings and to the lack of available financial resources. The objective of the project is to transform the former central point of the air-raid defence system into the epicentre of a new collective alert system on the topic of war, operating through memories of the past. Moreover, this could become the centre of a wider and widespread heritage system of local air-raid shelters: a network of material and immaterial goods organized by the common logic of enhancing memory, in order to strengthen the culture of peace and realize in the city a cultural itinerary based on historical values

TURNING EMPTY OFFICE BUILDINGS INTO SUSTAINABLE SOCIAL HOUSING

This paper deals with the issue of the increasing presence of empty office buildings. Indeed, compared to the industrial buildings, that have been turned into public services (libraries, museums, etc.), into luxurious homes, etc. (thanks to their architectural character and / or their identity value for local communities), the reuse of offices seems to be quite a different and less attractive issue for designers, and of little interest to developers. This may depend on their more recent age and lack of any architectural or identity significance, as well as on their out of date systems and low energy performance. Nevertheless, they are preserved, even if vacant, because of their value as part of the property assets of the owners, as well as the high demolition costs. Furthermore, as most of empty buildings, they are easily occupied by squatters, who cause degradation and social problems, with companies forced to prevent these situations by hiring expensive security services. ENPAM R.E., the real estate management company of the national pension and social security institute for doctors and dentists, has a number of these buildings, which are no longer required for rent. This led them to promote a collaboration with Politecnico di Milano, aimed at verifying the possibility that different office building types be easily and properly adapted for residential purposes (like dwellings, hostels, temporary residences, etc.), by the development of educational projects. The idea of turning empty offices into homes to rent comes from a comparison between the large availability of the former and the lack of the latter. Thus, this strategy could become a way for meeting the great need for social housing (even for emergencies) without using any more land, but rather preserving a part of energy and row materials already embodied in the existing building structures. In addition, the large number and rather small size of such situations seems to guarantee limited local problems and a large spread of urban rehabilitation opportunities in the future. By the empirical activity on selected case studies, typological models and technological solutions for the adaptive reuse and refurbishment have been outlined. These models and solutions are expected to help the evaluation of the opportunities for reusing different types of buildings, as well as the promotion of high environmental sustainability goals, through works of transformation of building systems and equipment

Evaluating sea cucumbers as extractive species for benthic bioremediation in mussel farms

Filter-feeding mussels blend suspended particles into faeces and pseudo-faeces enhancing organic matter flows between the water column and the bottom, and strengthening benthic-pelagic coupling. Inside operating farms, high bivalve densities in relatively confined areas result in an elevated rate of organic sinking to the seabed, which may cause a localized impact in the immediate surrounding. Deposit-feeding sea cucumbers are potentially optimal candidates to bioremediate mussel organic waste, due to their ability to process organic-enriched sediments impacted by aquaculture waste. However, although the feasibility of this polyculture has been investigated for a few Indo-Pacific species, little is known about Atlanto-Mediterranean species. Hence, for the first time, in the present study, we conducted a comparative investigation on the suitability of different Mediterranean sea cucumber species, to be reared in Integrated Multitrophic Aquaculture (IMTA) with mussels. A pilot-scale experiment was accomplished operating within a mussel farm where two sea cucumbers species, Holothuria tubulosa and Holothuria polii, were caged beneath the long-line mussel farm of Mytilus galloprovincialis. After four months, H. tubulosa showed high survivorship (94%) and positive somatic growth (6.07%); conversely H. polii showed negative growth (- 25.37%), although 92% of specimens survived. Furthermore, sea cucumber growth was size-dependent. In fact, smaller individuals, independently from the species, grew significantly faster than larger ones. These results evidenced a clear difference in the suitability of the two sea cucumber species for IMTA with M. galloprovincialis, probably due to their different trophic ecology (feeding specialization on different microhabitats, i.e. different sediment layers). Specifically, H. tubulosa seems to be an optimal candidate as extractive species both for polycultures production and waste bioremediation in M. galloprovincialis operating farms

Evaluating sea cucumbers as extractive species for benthic bioremediation in mussel farms

Filter-feeding mussels blend suspended particles into faeces and pseudo-faeces enhancing organic matter flows between the water column and the bottom, and strengthening benthic-pelagic coupling. Inside operating farms, high bivalve densities in relatively confined areas result in an elevated rate of organic sinking to the seabed, which may cause a localized impact in the immediate surrounding. Deposit-feeding sea cucumbers are potentially optimal candidates to bioremediate mussel organic waste, due to their ability to process organic-enriched sediments impacted by aquaculture waste. However, although the feasibility of this polyculture has been investigated for a few Indo-Pacific species, little is known about Atlanto-Mediterranean species. Hence, for the first time, in the present study, we conducted a comparative investigation on the suitability of different Mediterranean sea cucumber species, to be reared in Integrated Multitrophic Aquaculture (IMTA) with mussels. A pilotscale experiment was accomplished operating within a mussel farm where two sea cucumbers species, Holothuria tubulosa and Holothuria polii, were caged beneath the long-line mussel farm of Mytilus galloprovincialis. After four months, H. tubulosa showed high survivorship (94%) and positive somatic growth (6.07%); conversely H. polii showed negative growth (− 25.37%), although 92% of specimens survived. Furthermore, sea cucumber growth was size-dependent. In fact, smaller individuals, independently from the species, grew significantly faster than larger ones. These results evidenced a clear difference in the suitability of the two sea cucumber species for IMTA with M. galloprovincialis, probably due to their different trophic ecology (feeding specialization on different microhabitats, i.e. different sediment layers). Specifically, H. tubulosa seems to be an optimal candidate as extractive species both for polycultures production and waste bioremediation in M. galloprovincialis operating farms

Beyond domain alignment: Revealing the effect of intrinsic magnetic order on electrochemical water splitting

To reach a long term viable green hydrogen economy, rational design of active oxygen evolution reaction (OER) catalysts is critical. An important hurdle in this reaction originates from the fact that the reactants are singlet molecules, whereas the oxygen molecule has a triplet ground state with parallel spin alignment, implying that magnetic order in the catalyst is essential. Accordingly, multiple experimentalists reported a positive effect of external magnetic fields on OER activity of ferromagnetic catalysts. However, it remains a challenge to investigate the influence of the intrinsic magnetic order on catalytic activity. Here, we tuned the intrinsic magnetic order of epitaxial La$_{0.67}$Sr$_{0.33}$MnO$_{3}$ thin film model catalysts from ferro- to paramagnetic by changing the temperature in-situ during water electrolysis. Using this strategy, we show that ferromagnetic ordering below the Curie temperature enhances OER activity. Moreover, we show a slight current density enhancement upon application of an external magnetic field and find that the dependence of magnetic field direction correlates with the magnetic anisotropy in the catalyst film. Our work thus suggests that both the intrinsic magnetic order in La$_{0.67}$Sr$_{0.33}$MnO$_{3}$ films and magnetic domain alignment increase their catalytic activity. We observe no long-range magnetic order at the catalytic surface, implying that the OER enhancement is connected to the magnetic order of the bulk catalyst. Combining the effects found with existing literature, we propose a unifying picture for the spin-polarized enhancement in magnetic oxide catalysts.Comment: The following article will be submitted to Applied Physics Reviews. Main text (incl. references) 19 pages, 8 figures. Supplementary text 9 pages, 13 figure

La cultura esonda

Il contributo presenta una serie di riflessioni a margine del seminario La cultura esonda, che ha concluso il ciclo di incontri promosso da Confcooperative Abruzzo nell’ambito di INsegnalibro. Tutti le esperienze presentate nel seminario hanno testimoniato l’importanza di rompere gli schemi di modelli consolidati per affrontare nuove esigenze educative e culturali, attrarre e coinvolgere gruppi sempre più ampi e diversificati, superare l’antinomia tra chi produce/eroga cultura e chi ne beneficia e, soprattutto, riattivare delle relazioni profonde con i luoghi, intesi come risorse da esplorare, interpretare e valorizzare. La presentazione in apertura de “La scuola è in cortile” attraverso il dialogo tra l’autrice Valentina Dessì e Antonella Agnoli, massima esperta sul tema delle biblioteche, ha permesso di correlare subito il tema della cultura a quello della scuola e focalizzare l’attenzione sugli spazi all’aperto, la cui importanza a supporto dei progetti educativi non ha avuto sempre adeguata considerazione nelle attività di progettazione, cura e uso delle infrastrutture scolastiche. Come per le scuole, anche per le biblioteche il successo non dipende esclusivamente dalla qualità degli spazi e delle attrezzature, ma anche e soprattutto dalla loro riconoscibilità come presidi culturali e centri di aggregazione nei territori. In questa linea che si inseriscono le esperienze della biblioteca Casa di Quartiere “F. Di Giampaolo” e delle scuole pescaresi coinvolte nel progetto INsegnalibro

Progettare scuole in scenari innovativi / Designing schools in innovation scenarios

Agli architetti viene chiesto oggi di farsi interpreti delle aspettative di innovazione della scuola. Ampi spazi di ricerca e aggiornamento sono possibili partendo dalle evidenze dei tanti errori del passato nel controllo delle prestazioni edilizie e confrontandosi con un’ampia casistica di recenti realizzazioni a livello internazionale. Tutto questo però non è sufficiente, se non è accompagnato da una apertura al dialogo con le discipline che si occupano di processi educativi e relazionali e, soprattutto, con coloro che “abitano” le scuole. Il contributo ricostruisce uno scenario sull’approccio transdisciplinare e partecipativo nella ricerca e nel progetto dei nuovi ambienti di apprendimento e si interroga sulle potenzialità e i limiti dell’innovazione nel progetto delle scuole.Architects are being asked nowadays to interpret the expectation of school innovation. Ample room for research and further knowledge and skills is possible, starting from the evidence of the many errors made in the past in the oversight of building performance and referring to a large number of recent projects at an international level. All this, however, is not enough unless it is accompanied by openness to dialogue with the educational scholars and, above all, with the “inhabitants” of schools. This article presents a scenario on the transdisciplinary and participatory approach in the research and design of new learning environments and questions the potential and limits of innovation in school design