New “energy approaches” to architectural and urban design

Abstract

In recent years, international protocols on the safeguarding and the conservation of resources and environmental protection policies have totally and radically redefined our approach both to architectural and urban design and to territorial planning in the context of greater sustainability. At the same time, the technology at our disposal for solving energy and environmental problems through the use of renewable energy resources, while also guaranteeing comfort, safety and efficiency, has increased exponentially.
The “environmental issue” has now taken on vast proportions, and intervention has become a political, social, cultural, technical and scientific imperative. But it is also a somewhat vague and generic notion which may, paradoxically, be everything and nothing at the same time, depending on our point of view on how best to tackle the problem. As a result, although architecture, the city and the local territory are the undeniable protagonists of such intervention, they seem to be diluted in a macrocosm of knowledge, disciplines and larger, more diverse problems regarding geography, chemistry, physics, pollution, hydro-geological instability, economics, market fluctuations and so on.
What is more, a somewhat extreme conception of “the environment” has now swallowed up the building, architecture, the city and the local territory, removing all trace of their disciplines and identities. If our sole aim is to ensure eco-efficiency at whatever cost, we run the serious risk that some types of both small-scale and large-scale intervention may eradicate the identity of the places concerned. Instead, what is needed is that the latter be safeguarded and valorised through the adoption of opportune strategies. Sustainability should be achieved by means of “global” system approaches that take into account the enhancement of the historic and cultural identity of the local territory and city, with a view to upgrading the enjoyment and visibility of environments and implementing “innovative” technologies and organisational models.
When the latter have been used in the construction of new buildings or in modifications to existing ones, they have given rise to new forms and new languages, as well as saving energy and producing energy from renewable sources (photovoltaic, solar geothermal, wind, etc.). Indeed, our goals should also include comfort, psychological and physical wellbeing, the quality of indoor life, and so on.