Assessment and mitigation strategies to counteract overheating in urban historical areas in Rome

As urban overheating is increasing, there is a strong public interest towards mitigation strategies to enhance comfortable urban spaces, for their role in supporting urban metabolism and social life. The study presents an assessment of the existing thermal comfort and usage of San Silvestro Square in Rome during the summer, and performs the simulation of cooling strategies scenarios, to understand their mitigation potential for renovation projects. The first stage concerns a field analysis of the thermal and radiative environment on the 1st and 2nd of August 2014, including meteorological measurements and unobtrusive observations, to understand how people experience and respond to extreme microclimate conditions. In the second stage, the research proposes scenario simulations on the same day to examine the influence of cool colored materials, trees and vegetative surfaces on thermal comfort. The thermal comfort assessment was based on Physiologically Equivalent Temperature (PET), whereas microclimatic simulations were conducted with CFD calculations (ENVImet v.4.3.1). The first stage shows a strong relationship between lower PET values and attendance rate, depending on daily shading patterns. The second stage shows a relevant improvement of thermal comfort, with PET values of 12 °C comparing to the no-intervention scenario, associated with a combination of cool materials and trees

Climate Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Roofs and Pavements. A Case Study at Sapienza University Campus

The progressively emerging concept of urban resilience to climate change highlights the importance of mitigation and adaptation measures, and the need to integrate urban climatology in the design process, in order to better understand the multiple effects of combined green and cool technologies for the transition to climate responsive and thermally comfortable urban open spaces. This study focuses the attention on selected mitigation and adaptation technologies; two renovation scenarios were designed and modeled according to the minimal intervention criterion. The study pays attention to the effect on surface temperature and physiological equivalent temperature (PET) of vegetation and high albedo materials characterizing the horizontal boundaries of the site. The Sapienza University campus, a historical site in Rome, is taken as a case study. These results highlight the importance of treed open spaces and the combination of permeable green pavements associated with cool roofs as the most effective strategy for the mitigation of summer heatwaves and the improvement of outdoor thermal comfort

Tabula rasa nella modernizzazione: assimilazione del modello tra identità e innovazione

Reflecting upon Modernity means going back to the past. In a phase characterized by a strong acceleration of the ongoing transformation, Modernity, as a heritage, leads architecture and planning to meditate on the effectiveness of the old values. In this regard, the process of modernization ─ conceived as “convergence to social change”, which started in the last century ─ and the related phenomenon of globalization can be a meaningful topic of discussion. Moving away from a Eurocentric perspective, this essay explores the places that, by reflex, were exposed to severe pressure. It wants to acquire the point of view of the “receiving countries” in order to better examine the different reception ways in the perception of those (external) forces, which over the time, have determined a large scale transformation. One of the most significant aspects of the modernist machine was the universalistic propensity, whose results are still trackable in the contemporary city. Tabula rasa was one of its main attitudes: displace, destroy and replace became the key words of the urban policy. We will next use tabula rasa as a metaphor to describe both the material and immaterial actions on the territory: a point of departure (due to predetermined conditions) or a point of arrival (act of a choice), that allows us to think about the relationship between innovation and tradition. In the process of assimilation of external models, we can recognize two behaviors, as already codified by the ancient Roman culture: imitatio (the unchanged iteration) and aemulatio (the critical reworking). Nevertheless, we can speak about negatio, that is the rejection of everything which is foreign, and finally employ these three “categories” to think over the modern experiment. The events occured during the 20th century show how the necessity for renovation has often been interpreted as a complete separation from tradition. This is the case of the eastern countries, where the destructions of war linked with the imposition of ideological role models have represented the apotheosis of the tabula rasa. Cultural alienation was one of its worst consequences, and this is the reason why at a later time, the reaction of negatio appeared, prompted by the desire to return to the roots. Roots that in others cases were the real foundations from which a new paradigm, to be exported, began to arise (adopting aemulatio). Starting from the frontiers' movements, from the alternate moments of openness and closure in the Modernity history it is possible to observe the different roles in the game of negotiation among international relations. In this context, what is the role of architecture in relation to the elimination, conservation, and development of national and individual identity? Could tradition be renewed and updated depending on the fresh needs? Today, tabula rasa as an attitude or circumstance catches the attention of the European culture of urbanism. Therefore, the dialectic between continuity and discontinuity comes to life, presenting us with renovated issues