Search

The paper identifies appropriate design strategies of urban open space re-use that operate according to the logic of mitigation and adaptation and that allow the conservation and redevelopment of natural resources in the area and the connection between ecological and environmental values for an overall enhancement of the built environment. The re-use of urban open spaces focused on activation of new processes of functional, environmental and social reconnection, well satisfies some needs that can be traced back to the thorny issue of safety and, in general, to the improvement of the quality of life. In particular, the following considerations start from the idea of reconstructing the relations between the natural and built environment through a “productive” development of the territory and they share the interest for environmentally friendly technologies use. The paper also will show design proposal in contexts characterized by specific critical social and technological-environmental issues. The re-use strategies, the natural and landscape reconfiguration, the usability in general are all closely related aspects to achieving a renewed ecological-environmental quality of the territory as a whole.

To transform the delicate theme of acceptance from problem to resource it is neces- sary to manage and direct the transformations that migratory phenomena generate, starting from a cultural and then physical reorganisation of the city. The authors will delve into some of the themes mainly related to the opportunity to work on both the envi- ronmental and technological quality of urban spaces and their systematisation, in order to create a more performing space-functional structure capable of adapting to continu- ous socio-environmental changes. In addition, the design strategies proposals deal with particular attention with the aspect of ecological biodiversity protection that passes through the network connections of the habitats, and more generally of natural areas.

The highly stratified nature of Mediterranean cities, if on the one hand contrib­utes to the construction of an image with remarkable historical and artistic val­ues, on the other it makes their reading and understanding more complex. The relationship between archaeology and the context, especially urban, has many variables and problems related both to the mode of use of the user/citizen as well as the need for transformation and growth of the city itself. Archaeological heritage is not a sort of “reserve” that is separated from the context. On the contrary, it is necessary to work to reduce the gap that often exists between everyday reality and the reality of the asset, the result of years of isolation policies. This contribution, from the research-project experiences matured by the author, proposes an hypothesis of “enriched” path in which cultural heritage, in particu­lar archaeological, are put to system with the context of belonging. The sustainable use of cultural resources and the concept of “selecting” the most significant goods in relation to the path to be realized, are the main ideas of the proposed considerations as well as Accessibility, comfort and safety concepts of the visit are the strategic points of a fruition project to be devel­oped starting from the user’s needs and in com­pliance with the environmental and technological compatibility of the asset to be protected., UPLanD - Journal of Urban Planning, Landscape & environmental Design, V. 4 N. 2 (2019): Black

Urban regeneration aims to pursue an upgraded level of sustainability each time with a new experience creating a positive competition between nations, trying to differentiate their works with innovative technologies. The purpose is to develop areas to create sustainable, multi-functional, totally accessible public spaces characterized by two components: the green component (vegetation) and the grey one (built environment), which will become the main elements to achieve a new eco-oriented reticular redevelopment. The case study of Hudson Yards set an example of how sustainable technologies can be used to create a mixed-use real estate with office, residential and retail space, integrated with a central green public square. The new structure of urban context is itself becoming a new platform for sharing: the collection of data through IT tools such as GIS (Geographic Information System) allows to keep every aspect under control and to make it understandable to everyone.

The contribute concerns, in particular, the description of systems for the production of clean energy by exploiting the movement of solar hot air-flows, so-called solar towers. The projects that considered in the first part are connected not only by their working principles but, also, by the scale of the project. In fact, they are “power plants” situated in mostly dry and arid areas, with an energy output which starts from 50 KW of the prototype in Manzanares, reaching a hypothetical production of around 100-200 MW. In the second part of this contribution, some design applications of building scale combined sun-wind mechanisms will be show. The implementation of combined solar-wind technology on a building-scale adds further complexity, also considering that energy efficiency does not guarantee the fulfilment of living/business comfort for the users of the building. In fact, the projects examined integrate the chimney system with a number of strategies to control the indoor microclimate, both active or passive, so as to make the living conditions more appropriate to the climatic context. A further element of complexity is their technological and architectural integration. The application of innovative technologies requires a design approach that is strongly oriented to a systemic view of the building – power plant, in its active and passive elements. A vision that implies an appropriate re-definition of the objectives and strategies when working on existing buildings as well as the need to define and investigate what constraints these buildings pose to the context in which they occur.

Urban mobility needs to be organized according to the criteria of sustainability and, therefore, conceived as a system that “meets the needs of society to move freely, gain access, communicate, trade and establish relationships without sacrificing other essential human or ecological requirements today or in the future” (World Business Council for Sustainable Development). Urban mobility is, in fact, one of the main elements upon which the quality of life of the city is usually measured. The authors, based on a didactic experiment, propose a series of considerations on the relationship between urban mobility and the quality of life. Road systems, which constitute 80% of the public spaces, are often not able to provide residents either a space to move safely or a place to meet and socialize. Precisely for these reasons, it is necessary to work on urban mobility through an approach that aims to redevelop the existing road patrimony taking into account the social, technological and environmental components. In particular, with respect to the ecological-environmental dimension, redevelopment strategies aimed at improving the overall quality of life (urban comfort, safety and environmental protection) through natural systems with low environmental impact were examined.

Starting from the sharing of the principles that guide the promotion of green infrastructures to support the regeneration processes of anthropized contexts according to the declination by the European Parliament that considers them "as a network of natural and seminatural areas planned at a strategic level with other environmental elements, designed and operated so as to provide a wide spectrum of ecosystem services" (Green Infrastructure: Enhancing Europe's Natural Capital, 2013), the interest of the authors focuses on the strategic role that ecological networks assume in the aforementioned infrastructures as well as on the opportunity to integrate ecological networks with other functional networks with the aim of establishing environmental compatibility with the surrounding context.

The disused railway heritage represents the identity and the collective memory, whose valorisation requires the search for a new balance between the opportunity to increase its environmental, cultural and social values, through an active fruition, and the innovation of the management systems, through a civic maintenance of the common good. It is a communal heritage and represents a resource for the cultural and social development of the territory of which it is an integral part. In the national context, in fact, the idea that the recovery of this heritage is a resource for the widespread exploitation, able to activate strategies of local development, is now consolidated. The recovery of the abandoned railway heritage represents a relevant physical-spatial resource that must necessarily be considered in the context of projects for requalification and transformation of urban contexts. According to a conservative approach of the available resources characterized not using further soil, but by the recovery and re-functionalization of the existing built environment. The widespread presence of railway property and disused tracks throughout the Country is an opportunity of valorisation. The reuse of building for purposes identified by local socio-economic sectors allows to provide territories with an extensive network of services, designed through bottom-up decision-making processes, calibrated on local needs.

The complexity of the immigration phenomenon, in which Italy is involved, requires an analytical and design approach, interdisciplinary oriented in order to enhance the cultural potential, economic and social growth. According to the current immigration policies, strongly oriented to integration and inclusiveness, it raises the need for a reflection on the problems linked to the legal aspects and the “space” dimension of the refugee camps. They are officially temporary places; however, refugees stay there on average for 6 years. This requires the control of not only social but also environmental sustainability conditions. Starting from the regulatory framework today represented by the first European legislation on management of migratory flows and recognition of the fundamental rights of the migrant population, the contribution aims to highlight two fundamental aspects: 1. the criticisms of spaces for reception, in relation to which there is a need to identify the right balance between security and integration (Savino, 2012); 2. the energy and environmental qualities of which the reception places can be equipped, according to the eco-oriented technological design approach that is low cost, low energy and low impact. In this direction a different design approach is outlined with regard to such centers, understood not as places of conflict (both among migrants and between them and host populations) but as sharing sites (Bellaviti, 2011) and Well-being (Pinto Faria et al, 2013). The design methodology is illustrated through a series of best practices forming the palimpsest of design experimentation of quarry area in the province of Caserta, redeveloped in order to host a refugee camp.

Logical development based on the consumption of soil, the displacement of productive activities and technological-functional obsolescence has produced in the long term “waste”: life cycles completed, interrupted or, in some cases, not even started. To respond actively to this condition, it is necessary to think creatively proposing intervention strategies focused on the logic of the “reuse of abandoned spaces and recycling of surviving urban materials”. The study adopts this logic of reuse and recycling, intended as actions designed to transform and make territories more sustainable by starting new life cycles. The authors inspired by an interesting case study, the seascape of Monte di Procida (Naples), deal with the conversion of neglected systems as opportunities for the environmental redevelopment of sensitive contexts. The regeneration of brownfield sites can be associated to the wider debate on environmental sustainability. Particular attention is given to the issue of re-connection in different declinations: functional, technological and ecological-environmental. In particular, with regard to the ecological-environmental dimension, the re-connection of marine-coastal environments, through biological corridors of ecological-functional communication, it is possible if, along the coasts, the horizontal connectivity is guaranteed, i.e. the capacity of providing connections between core areas through exclusively land or air corridors and vertical connectivity, which allows for connections between coastal and marine areas, while also including both underwater and above water corridors.

The complex balance among quality of the built environment, living of the open spaces and containment of the energy consumptions, represents a hard challenge within the urban regeneration that finds in the architectural and technological experimentation an instrument of both interpretation of the end users’ needs and performance improvement of the built environment and relationship spaces. We promote, therefore, a reflection on the "technological" role of open spaces and buildings, in comparison with the fruition potentialities and, above all, in comparison with the stimulant possibility to make them places of a high-tech content, respecting the identity of places and the local housing culture. The research, of which we describe the highlights, is part of a wider research carried out under an agreement Italy-China attended by several Italian universities. The research group (ICAR/12) of the Second University of Napoli has carried out considerations and has developed project ideas for the Cantonese neighbourhood of Guang-Fu, in relation to two main issues: the environmental redevelopment of a linear open space and the rehabilitation of energy-environmental southeast quadrant of the neighbourhood, with its historical buildings.

It is important that the technical development, which tends to be sectored knowledge, is characterized by an integrated management of transformations especially in a time in history when the anthropic changes affecting more and more deeply on the environment. In this respect, the present work proposes a methodology of approach to the problem of the study of compromised territories that have multi-disciplinary nature and involves areas of the territorial survey and environmental technologies. These disciplines have the common aim of seeking operating reversible practices that constitute the basis to direct recovery project in an eco-oriented key. The territorial survey and the multicriteria representation of acquired and processed data provide an important input to the territorial analysis through innovative detection systems. This systems allow the acquisition of data for the land use monitoring, the identification of surface waterway, the survey of areas exposed to landslide risk, the analysis of the physical and biological characteristics of watercourses and identifying polluted areas. This information, supplemented with historical documents and maps, allow the understanding of the dynamics of change occurred over time. The eco-technological survey of the examinated territory is the investigation phase in which descriptive data on the environmental conditions (climatic and microclimatic data, fruitive characters, networks system, etc..) are systematized. This step is, therefore, preparatory to the definition of the strategic objectives for the recovery project in a sustainable key, that frames the territory as a complex fabric in which each process is controlled so that the cost of the changes, in environmental, economic and social terms, not is transferred to future generations. The research focuses on the area of the Regi Lagni, ancient system of artificial drainage in the province of Caserta (Italy), which is interesting for the concentration of significant alterations of the environmental subsystems of water, air and soil. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.sace.7.2.7131

The recovery of Brownfield redevelopment imposes a delicate task that tends towards a compromise between the need to preserve the characteristic composition of the building and the will to make it functional. Our thoughts will describe a teaching experiment of the thesis “From the industrial building to the lab-museum”, which deals with the museum as a responsive use for a dismissed industrial building. The design approach experimented by the authors within the Research Project of National Interest entitled “The environmentally friendly behaviour in the redevelopment and conversion project of Brownfield sites”, starts from a critical reading of the area of study through an oriented interpretation of its natural and human-made characters. The aim of the thesis is not linked to a design speech exclusively related to the re-functionalization but rather to the symbolic role that the Museum – Lab could play. From a technological point of view, the main goals of the project are the satisfaction of the user’ needs of fruition and illumination through photovoltaic systems.