THE ARCHITECTURAL REHABILITATION OF COLLECTIVE HOUSING. FUNCTIONAL, SOCIO-PHYSIOLOGICAL AND RESIDENTIAL SECURITY ASPECTS.

Besides the benefits brought to the energy balance and to the interior comfort through the direct interventions on the envelope elements, a complex and multidimensional process of architectural rehabilitation, which operates on a spatial and morpho-functional level, could become an instrument for improving the overall quality of housing, the optimal and coherent functionality, the potentiation of good neighborly policy, an its ability of facilitating the social contact and stimulation of communication. The paper explores from this perspective the most important types of interventions: from those which consist only in the reevaluation and reshaping of the living space to those focused on the entire ensemble, including the reorganization of internal and external spaces. For the operations to have the target-effect, it is needed that the proposals of rehabilitation to be realized on different levels, depending on the context and situation, and to follow an economy of usage in conformity with the collective life wished by its inhabitants. The re(arrangement) of common areas, internal or external, presumes their investment as thresholds between public spaces, semiprivate spaces and familial spaces, their organization for an easy and adequate accessibility to the collective needs without assuming a perturbing role in the functionality of the residential units. Their functional role must be accompanied by the one that is environment-generator. Furthermore, between the qualitative aspects of a social collective residential building, which a rehabilitation process cannot ignore,it is also one of security - linked to the level of protection and safety, which a dwelling building, residential ensemble and its neighborhood offer, these being an essential condition in the evaluation of a district or an urban area. This paper proposes, applied on a certain situation -an ensemble of existing social collective housing -- and in a realistic scenario, a set of architectural and urban rehabilitation interventions, focused on the imperative direction of a sustainable urban development,on the revalorization of urban territories and increase of residential satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]