Architectural and environmental retrofit of public social housing: opportunity for contemporary city. A case history in Rome

Abstract

Declension of the terms Reduce, Reuse, Recycle in relation to urban development, nowadays offers the opportunity for a new generation of spaces and architectures that interpret construction – dilapidated, neglected worn out or abandoned – as a real resource and hence value. Renewal activities concern new programmes and projects for rethinking uses, meanings and values which existing construction – from the individual building to the neighbourhood – contain and which can change. Indeed, nowadays, a series of design approaches can be acknowledged and consolidated; European best practices which reinterpret renewal projects – including energy regeneration –, not limiting themselves to technological and typological updating of buildings, but also to urban and social implications. The paper proposes to document these advanced reference scenarios, flanked by educational experimentation and research being performed in case studies developed together with Rome’s local building authority (ATER).