Search

Introduction: In performance-based approaches and quality assessment protocols used both in the technological design of architecture and the environmental design of the built habitat, the concept of psycho-physical wellbeing is usually defined in purely quantitative human-techno-centric or eco-techno-centric terms. However, in socio-technical-environmental realities in continuous transition, wellbeing extends to areas that cannot be confined within the notions of comfort or healthiness because it involves material and immaterial, cultural and technical, aesthetic and performative, real and virtual aspects. Method: The aim of this article emerges from studies being conducted as part of Ex-Mind research. The working hypothesis is to broaden performance-based approaches in a technological-environmental sense to avoid reducing the goal of psycho-physical wellbeing just to the compliance with technical-constructive aspects. It could be possible combining the material and quantifiable dimensions with other aspects that extend the project to sensorial, perceptive, and emotional interactions. Important theoretical-scientific evidence is already emerging on this dichotomy to be overcome from areas of project evaluation responsive to the new paradigms of sustainability such as resilience, inclusive placemaking, and wellbeing according to the flourish model. Characteristics such as dimensions, proportions, shapes, colors, scents and immaterial aspects of spaces, for example, should be evaluated with respect to the complex physical and mental comfort conditions that they can produce. Results: In the technological-environmental vision of the human habitat project, the objective of psycho-physical wellbeing should be a function of the dynamic balance between the constantly evolving users'/inhabitants' needs and the variability of context factors and agents. The concept of wellbeing therefore takes on a scalar and expanded declination. Considering the technological-environmental approach, a possible element of originality emerges in the integrated and balanced human-environmental centered vision aimed at broadening the framework of the qualitative-quantitative references of the project of the human habitat. This could be an alternative bio-psycho-socio-technological methodological vision starting from the determinants of wellbeing in a broad sense, including natural, cultural and socioeconomic environmental factors, social and collective networks of relationships and participation, individual behavioral, physical, and functional factors of people. Added to these determinants are the different technological-environmental interface systems with which the project is able to define, in a bio-psycho-socio-technological sense, multiple and variable regulatory conditions of wellbeing, at a building, urban, and territorial level. Discussion: The possible outcomes of this alternative and integrated hypothesis are related to the reconnection with the production and regeneration processes of the built material, to the reorganization and reinvention of spatial and perceptual relationships between individuals, communities, technologies, environment, and to the integration of non-directly quantifiable subjective variables into the design of the built environment. The proposed integrated bio-psycho-socio-technological vision may open for developments concerning the expansion of the determinants of psycho-physical wellbeing through new performative descriptors and the definition of agile tools, procedures, and metrics to integrate wellbeing assessments, including consensus-based approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports studies and project experiments being developed in researches financed by local authorities, the Ministry of University and Research with the support of NextGenerationEU and the European Commission. The work investigates the potential of culture, creativity and natural and built heritage in the green, digital and inclusive transition and is focused on the creation of sustainable, inclusive, beautiful spaces, involving the collaboration among different disciplines (architecture, music and immersive sound, visual arts, social sciences, and neuroscience). The studied spaces aim to create material and immaterial architectures, characterized by circular processes and therefore adaptable, flexible, removable, repositionable and reusable. We foresee the use of material elements (building products) and immaterial elements (sounds, images, colors, lights) to define spaces intended for the diffusion of different cultural forms and to implement the attractiveness of places afflicted by processes of abandonment and social degradation. Ideas, criteria and solutions for architecture and sound and video technologies (aimed at the definition of spaces whose perception involves full use of the senses as well as the application of the extended mind concept) will be presented to promote environmentally, economically and socially sustainable transformations of natural and built habitats for new forms of cultural diffusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over time, the economic and social conditions determined expansion and contraction processes of the domestic space (from the cave to the castle, from the castle to the studio flat) with important consequences on people's life quality. This evolution stimulated the development of cultural debates and design experiments on the theme of flexibility. In the contemporary scenario, flexibility has a big value because it represents an important design strategy to meet the needs of contemporary living in a sustainable dimension. For more than twenty years, the authors have been linked by a working relationship aimed at comparing theoretical scientific developments and design practice. This paper offers some reflections on the evolution of flexibility concept in residential construction by providing concrete examples through the reading of some projects. The variations of flexibility are debated with reference to the people's needs in the adaptive reuse of buildings. The writing faces the functional mix and the modifiability of interior spaces given by the design of flexible technological units (partitions, systems, furnishings) and mobile additions as well as the adaptability of the closures with respect to climatic and seasonal conditions. The theme of flexibility, too often "oversized" and not investigated in terms of feasibility, is presented in a possible and useful scale. Flexibility is also faced as a new way for showing the link between utility and beauty of the spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The resilience concept if referred to the built environment suggests 'safety' and recovery capacities that express adaptability and transformability characteristics. Recognising in the housing settlements many very significant aspects for inspecting the built systems adaptation and transformation needs, we present an extract of the research carried out on the housing topic, in agreement with the A.T.E.R. of Pescara and Abruzzo Confcooperatives. The work proposes indicators and criteria to allow the survey of the resilience capacities that can project the housing systems in a sustainable dimension, in which the aptitude to regeneration suggests the inhabitants know-how in the resources management, for a swell performance supply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject of the experimentation is the definition of some strategies for an efficient, responsible and sustainable building requalification, in the conversion of the public housing settlements of Pescara in eco-quarters, according to the aim of supplying a contribution to the local administration for the urban regeneration policies. Considering the high pollution indicators, the study aspires to an environmentally, economically and socially suitable cohabitation of the territorial and climatic and built elements. So we propose some requalification hypothesis, for an enhancement of the housing supply in a new urban mould with a positive environmental balance and able to cheer the considered context cultural and social conditions up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The presented research work proposes a study about the «flexibility» requirement, aiming to define its role in social housing requalification. For the Preturo A.T.E.R. settlement, characterized by considerable lack of technological units and performance gaps, we propose systems adaptable as for the variability of the dwelling, working and socialization needs for settled or to be settled users. The originality of the work consists in the identification of the flexibility as sustainable functional requalification strategy, also aware that the post-industrial buildings predisposition to transformation, given by their deterioration conditions, and the performance fitting possibilities are directly proportional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Il lavoro di ricerca presentato propone uno studio sul requisito «flessibilità», con l'obiettivo di definirne il ruolo nella riqualificazione del social housing. Per l'insediamento A.T.E.R. di Preturo, caratterizzato da considerevoli mancanze di unità tecnologiche e lacune prestazionali, si propongono sistemi adattabili rispetto alla variabilità delle esigenze abitative, lavorative e di socializzazione per tipologie di utenza insediate e insediabili. L'originalità del lavoro consiste nel riconoscimento della flessibilità come strategia di riqualificazione funzionale sostenibile, consapevole di una proporzionalità diretta tra la predisposizione alla trasformazione espressa dai livelli di degrado e guasto del costruito post-industriale e le possibilità di adeguamento prestazionale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lostudio èrivolto al territorio aquilanonel particolare momento post sisma in cuile vulnerabilità presenti e passate impongono interventi strutturali mirati a una ripresa forte e duratura. In questo articolo si trattadiun aspetto particolare del lavoro complessivo in corso di svolgimento: una proposta di materiali e tecnologie appropriate a uno sviluppo sostenibile da sperimentare per lo specifico territorio. Si riportano brevemente i riferimenti culturali e scientifici (conoscenza dei livelli di sostenibilità del territorio per scelte appropriate e consapevoli) che sostengono l'impostazione della ricerca e si delineano gli argomenti delle parallele indagini che completano il quadro strategico di sviluppo del territorio. In particolare, si fa cenno alle azioni per promuovere una nuova residenzialità supportata da una mobilità sostenibile e un'accessibilità ai servizi, dalla possibilità di nuovi impieghi in cluster eco-industriali per l'edilizia sostenibile e dalle ulteriori opportunità emergenti dall'integrazione tra i settori agricoltura, energia e turismo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]