The requalification of industrial buildings: a circular economy perspective

Since the 1970s, in Europe the industrial decommissioning phenomenon has led to the generation of an obsolescent and widespread building stock, located in highly strategic areas. This paper, aiming to make abandoned industrial buildings re-enter the market, focused on the development of prefabricated housing modules, according to the nested-building renovation approach. The project started from the constraint’s typological analysis (architectural, functional and structural) of 900 reinforced concrete industrial buildings in view of the intervention replicability. Finally, to validate the design and technological choices, the analysed system was applied to a real case study in Verona: the Greggi Warehouse (1960) in the “ex-Manifattura Tabacchi” factory area.

Design for Disassembly and the rehabilitation of public housing stock. A case study

This contribution presents the meta-design research scenario of the sustainable building redevelopment of the INA Casa “Sbarre Inferiori” district in Reggio Calabria based on a twofold reflection. On the one hand, the transformative potential, both technological and formal, of the public housing stock created under the INA Casa Plan. On the other, the extension of the life cycle of the buildings and the improvement of the spatial quality of the housing according to a circular, low-tech and ecological approach. The result is an abacus of technological additions in bio-xlam conceived according to the principles of Design for Disassembly, which allows the reuse of the modules in new spatial and functional configurations, and the remanufacturing and recycling of the elements at the end of their life.

Reviews

Transizione circolare e progetto. Un tema particolarmente presente, quello della Transizione, nell’attuale quotidianità politica, televisiva e di stampa, quasi abusato e non sempre completamente compreso. In relazione al progetto, la Transizione circolare assume una configurazione più specialistica, diventando al contempo una sfida, un obiettivo, un metodo per tutti gli stakeholder del mondo della progettazione. Una dinamica che coinvolge da diversi anni l’industria e che trova riscontro nel settore delle costruzioni, partendo da un assunto ormai consolidato rispetto alla necessità di modificare il rapporto tra consumo di risorse non rinnovabili e produzione di rifiuti, delineando il concetto di rifiuto come errore di progettazione e ripensando i cicli di vita di qualsiasi prodotto/componente. Edo Ronchi, nel suo recente testo “Le sfide della transizione ecologica”1, ribadisce non solo la necessità ma soprattutto la possibilità che le sfide della transizione ecologica possono segnare un cambiamento storico profondo della società e dell’economia, un vero e proprio cambiamento di civiltà per poter puntare su un benessere sostenibile.

Management of the C&D waste in the urban regeneration project

This paper presents the first results of the research agreement signed by the Federico II University and CDP Immobiliare concerning reusing and recycling construction waste in the urban regeneration project. The research is aimed to develop a technical protocol for the ex-ante evaluation of the demolition operations, with a special focus on the criteria for picking the material samples to undergo chemical-physical analysis. The article is focused on the demolition process, implementing a BIM-based filing of the building system and aimed at a preliminary understanding of the material quantity, the material consistency and the state of conservation of the elements to be demolished. A tentative pre-characterisation, and an inventory of any contaminants present in the materials are also provided. In the form of discussion, further implications related the building characterisation and the planning of material flows with the reuse and recycle supply chains are provided as well.

Coding the circularity. Design for the disassembly and reuse of building components

The architecture design today has new expressive features due to the parametric and computational modelling software, which greatly amplify the potential of language. This condition makes it possible to generate customised elements and systems through a process of cyber-physical interaction between design and architectural production. As well as the geometric constraints, dictated by manufacturing and assembly processes of materials, they can be incorporated in the generative design codes. The article examines the possibility to also include the main conditions that enable the selective disassembly of the elements and their reuse at the end of life, avoiding the generation of parts that are not remanufacturable or reusable.

Circular transition: scenarios for the future of design

The 22nd issue of TECHNE, which deals with the theme of circular transition and design, stems from the planning and scientific-cultural orientations developed with the Direction and Editorial Board for the period 2017-2021. The conviction that the processes of transferring decisions and knowledge must be accepted and developed along appropriate lines of continuity, is envisaged with the new Board and the new Direction of the journal, in the awareness of the value that it represents for the scientific community of SITdA. Promoting knowledge that supports applied research and technology transfer is the basic reference for the editorial direction also at the start of the 2021-2023 three-year period. TECHNE journal is now an important part of the Society’s common heritage and is increasingly recognized for its ranking and the contents expressed in a significant “critical area” such as the relationship between knowledge, design, technology and the environment in architecture. In recent years, the journal has thus acquired a significant accreditation thanks to the work carried out, since the year of its foundation in 2011, by figures who have succeeded each other in the different roles (Paolo Felli, Roberto Palumbo and Maria Teresa Lucarelli are to be mentioned for their commitment in the Direction, as well as Chiara Torricelli and Emilio Faroldi for their work as Editor in Chief) and thanks to the active participation of the Editorial Boards, organisms and members of SITdA, as with the contributions of experts and stakeholders who have published in the journal. The topic of this issue, entitled “Circular Transition and Design”, is an emerging theme in the field of technical policy and international and national research, which is treated according to articulated guidelines and forms of scientific debate. Correlating the concepts of circular transition and design is part of a choice of field that is now based on continuity and development of the elaboration of themes that have been clearly announced since the 1970s. From that period a path of sensitivity and knowledge was born, which can be started with “the limits of development” (Meadows et al., 1972), with “the circle to be closed” (Commoner, 1972) and with the need to evolve “beyond growth” (Daly, 1996), until we consciously tend towards climax-type conditions, characterized by the minimization of energy and matter flows in the metabolism of ecosystems (Rifkin, 1983). The conceptual and scientific elaboration of the years in which ecological thinking grew, saw its progressive transfer to the field of architecture, through the central role played by the technological area in its recognition as a science of transformation processes and interactions among the natural and anthropic environment. In the wake of the crises that have occurred over the last few decades, the concept of transition has been developed in the scientific field based on the evidence of the growing degradation of the environment as a living space for communities. From the climate crisis to the socio-economic crisis and up to the latest pandemic crisis, the impacts of processes fuelled by the effects of the Anthropocene era (Crutzen, 2005) require a radical revision of dissipative development models, which consider growth as a factor of constant amplification of productivity in the different fields of human activity, without considering the value of nature and the services it provides. In the era of the “Great Acceleration”, we are observing the significant transformation of the relationship between the human species and the biosphere: human beings have become bio-geological agents that modify the physical and metabolic processes of the planet, mainly affecting urban areas where, between 1945 and 2015, the settled population increased from 700 million to almost 4 billion (McNeill and Engelke, 2018). The progressive mismatch between technological and biological cycles identifies a trend that is no longer sustainable as turbulent economic growth constantly conflicts with the natural limits of the planet. The metabolism of our societies is carried out by exploiting the stocks and flows of matter and energy from natural systems, which however have limited regenerative and receptive capacities (Bologna and Giovannini, 2017). Human action for continuous and unlimited growth has thus transformed the circular processes, characteristic of the workings of natural systems, into linear processes at the end of which waste and non-reusable waste are produced. To overcome this model of production and consumption it is necessary to make processes circular again, in which the extraction of resources is reduced by keeping them in a cycle of use for as long as possible (Ronchi, 2021). This challenge must be approached by relocating the whole of humanity within the natural system on which it is dependent and to which it is strongly connected. Thus, development without quantitative growth tends to be implemented within the biophysical limits of natural systems. It is necessary to equip ourselves against the phenomena of large population growth and the enormous withdrawal and consumption of resources by organizing circular development models that minimize waste, make efficient use of resources and drastically reduce the loss of natural capital, the loss of biodiversity, pollution, inequalities and socio-economic crises, to name but a few of the most important problems of our time. The transition can therefore only be circular, capable of ensuring a safe and fair space for mankind, and therefore it can only be ecological, since only the correspondence – in terms of “weights” and times – between transformation processes and the carrying capacity of the ecosystem will allow the ecologically sustainable development. The idea of a circular transition sees products designed and manufactured to facilitate recycling, reuse, repair, disassembly and reconstruction, where objects are used for greater efficiency, as in the case of leasing and sharing, by increasing the transit time of products and artefacts in environmental systems and habitats. So, it is not a question of reallocating known aspects under umbrella concepts, but of implementing a profound cultural, scientific, productive and relational reconversion through a paradigm shift that places options and, above all, values in a different position, inducing new ones and determining ecosystem implications not previously practised. A major challenge will be played out in terms of the many transitions that accompany the mainstream of the ecological one, starting with the economic transition but also the administrative, infrastructural, urban, building and energy transitions. An increasing number of countries are coping with the disruptive effects of global warming and climate change by intensifying decarbonizationthrough the transition from fossil to renewable energy sources. This pathway can be implemented through technological innovations of greater efficiency and the reduction of energy needs, fuelling the transition to greater electricity use and stimulating research into the use of scarce resources (Sassoon, 2019, p.9). Promoting the transition to regenerative cities requires, on the one hand, the development of circular metabolisms and processes gradually replacing conventional and linear ones, and on the other hand, the proposal of low-carbon technical policies and actions, support for social innovation, as well as urban organization in eco-districts where efficient and low-waste products and processes in the field of energy and materials are integrated. The management of complexity is the qualifying point through which it is necessary to increase the operational synergies between research, the professional world and local authorities. The transfer of knowledge and the acquisition of skills, as well as the relationship between generalist knowledge and the specializationof knowledge, is part of the delicate relationship between research, experimentation and innovation. The qualification of architectural design concerning the advanced principles of circular transition requires the management of integrated knowledge systems, expanding its approach in terms of pluralism, the interaction between disciplinary specializations, recognition of contributions avoiding cultural hegemonies or instrumental subalternity. If specialization becomes necessary, it requires «less and less abstraction and more focus on objectives on which the contributions of multiple and integrated skills converge. The horizons of knowledge and design must be measured against multidisciplinary collaboration and not so much against a transdisciplinarity that poses problems of scientific identity» (Torricelli, 2014). Within this scenario, the relationship between ecology and society must also take into account the relationship between the bio-economy and the organization of the territory, landscape and environment, in the same way as the interdependencies between the anthropic system and the natural system. The future of the project, in its necessary conditions of heteronomy, can only be human and environment centered, according to a broad systemic understanding and an adaptation to natural limits without pushing beyond the environmental capacities of resource regeneration and waste absorption (Bologna and Giovannini 2017).

Editorial

Every crisis at the same time reveals, forewarns and implies changes with cyclical trends that can be analyzed from different disciplinary perspectives, building scenarios to anticipate the future, despite uncertainties and risks. And the current crisis certainly appears as one of the most problematic of the modern era: recently, Luigi Ferrara, Director of the School of Design at the George Brown College in Toronto and of the connected Institute without Boundaries, highlighted how the pandemic has simply accelerated undergoing dynamics, exacerbating other crises – climatic, environmental, social, economic – which had already been going on for a long time both locally and globally. In the most economically developed contexts, from North America to Europe, the Covid emergency has led, for example, to the closure of almost 30% of the retail trade, as well as to the disposal and sale of many churches. Places of care and assistance, such as hospitals and elderly houses, have become places of death and isolation for over a year, or have been closed. At the same time, the pandemic has imposed the revolution of the remote working and education, which was heralded – without much success – more than twenty years ago. In these even contradictory dynamics, Ferrara sees many possibilities: new roles for stronger and more capable public institutions as well as the opportunity to rethink and redesign the built environment and the landscape. Last but not least, against a future that could be configured as dystopian, a unique chance to enable forms of citizenship and communities capable of inhabiting more sustainable, intelligent and ethical cities and territories; and architects capable of designing them. This multifactorial and pervasive crisis seems therefore to impose a deep review of the current unequal development models, in the perspective of that “creative destruction” that Schumpeter placed at the basis of the dynamic entrepreneurial push: «To produce means to combine materials and forces within our reach. To produce other things, or the same things by a different method, means to combine these materials and forces differently» (Schumpeter, 1912). A concept well suiting to the design practice as a response to social needs and improving the living conditions. This is the perspective of Architectural Technology, in its various forms, which has always placed the experimental method at the center of its action. As Eduardo Vittoria already pointed out: «The specific contribution of the technological project to the development of an industrial culture is aimed at balancing the emotional-aesthetic data of the design with the technical-productive data of the industry. Design becomes a place of convergence of ideas and skills related to factuality, based on a multidisciplinary intelligence» (Vittoria, 1999). A lucid and appropriate critique of the many formalistic emphases that have invested contemporary architecture. In the most acute phases of the pandemic, the radical nature of this polycrisis has been repeatedly invoked as a lever for an equally radical modification of the development models, for the definitive defeat of conjunctural and emergency modes of action. With particular reference to the Italian context, however, it seems improper to talk about a “change of models” – whether economic, social, productive or programming, rather than technological innovation – since in the national reality the models and reference systems prove to not to be actually structured. The current socio-economic and productive framework, and the political and planning actions themselves, are rather a variegated and disordered set of consolidated practices, habits often distorted when not deleterious, that correspond to stratified regulatory apparatuses, which are inconsistent and often ineffective. It is even more difficult to talk about programmatic rationality models in the specific sector of construction and built environment transformation, where the enunciation of objectives and the prospection of planning actions rarely achieve adequate projects and certain implementation processes, verified for the consistency of the results obtained and monitored for the ability in maintaining the required performance over time. Rather than “changing the model”, in the Italian case, we should therefore talk about giving shape and implementation to an organic and rational system of multilevel and inter-sectorial governance models, which assumes the principles of subsidiarity, administrative decentralization, inter-institutional and public-private cooperation. But, even in the current situation, with the pandemic not yet over, we are already experiencing a sort of “return to order”: after having envisaged radical changes – new urban models environmentally and climatically more sustainable, residential systems and public spaces more responsive to the pressing needs of social demand, priority actions to redevelop the suburbs and to strength infrastructures and ecosystem services, new advanced forms of decision-making decentralization for the co-planning of urban and territorial transformations, and so on – everything seems to has been reset to zero. This is evident from the list of actions and projects proposed by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), where no clear national strategy for green transition emerges, even though it is repeatedly mentioned. As highlighted by the Coordination of Technical-Scientific Associations for the Environment and Landscape1, and as required by EU guidelines2, this transition requires a paradigm shift that assumes eco-sustainability as a transversal guideline for all actions. With the primary objective of protecting ecosystem balances, improving and enhancing the natural and landscape capital, as well as protecting citizen health and well-being from environmental risks and from those generated by improper anthropization phenomena. The contents of the Plan explicitly emphases the need to «repair the economic and social damage of the pandemic crisis» and to «contribute to addressing the structural weaknesses of the Italian economy», two certainly relevant objectives, the pursuit of which, however, could paradoxically contrast precisely with the transition to a more sustainable development. In the Plan, the green revolution and the ecological transition are resolved in a dedicated axis (waste management, hydrogen, energy efficiency of buildings, without however specific reform guidelines of the broader “energy” sector), while «only one of the projects of the Plan regards directly the theme Biodiversity / Ecosystem / Landscape, and in a completely marginal way» (CATAP, 2021). Actions are also limited for assessing the environmental sustainability of the interventions, except the provision of an ad hoc Commission for the streamlining of some procedural steps and a generic indication of compliance with the DNSH-Do not significant Harm criterion (do not cause any significant damage), without specific guidelines on the evaluation methods. Moreover, little or nothing in the Plan refers on actions and investments in urban renewal, abandoned heritage recovery3, of in protecting and enhancing areas characterized by environmental sensitivity/fragility; situations widely present on the national territory, which are instead the first resource for a structural environmental transition. Finally yet importantly, the well-known inability to manage expenditure and the public administration inefficiencies must be considered: a limit not only to the effective implementation of projects, but also to the control of the relationship between time, costs and quality (also environmental) of the interventions. In many places, the Plan has been talked about as an opportunity for a real “reconstruction”, similar to that of post-war Italy; forgetting that the socio-economic renaissance was driven by the INA-Casa Plan4, but also by a considerable robustness of the cultural approach in the research and experimentation of new housing models (Schiaffonati, 2014)5. A possible “model”, which – appropriately updated in socio-technical and environmental terms – could be a reference for an incisive governmental action aiming at answering to a question – the one of the housing – far from being resolved and still a priority, if not an emergency. The crisis also implies the deployment of new skills, with a review of outdated disciplinary approaches, abandoning all corporate resistances and subcultures that have long prevented the change. A particularly deep fracture in our country, which has implications in research, education and professions, dramatically evident in the disciplines of architectural and urban design. Coherently with the EU Strategic Agenda 2019-2024 and the European Pillar of Social Rights, the action plan presented by the Commission in March 2021, with the commitment of the Declaration of Porto on May 7, sets three main objectives for 2030: an employment rate higher than 78%, the participation of more than 60% of adults in training courses every year and at least 15 million fewer people at risk of social exclusion or poverty6. Education, training and retraining, lifelong learning and employment-oriented skills, placed at the center of EU policy action, now require large investments, to stimulate employment transitions towards the emerging sectors of green, circular and digital economies (environmental design and assessment, risk assessment & management, safety, durability and maintainability, design and management of the life cycle of plans, projects, building systems and components: contents that are completely marginal or absent in the current training offer of Architecture). Departments and PhDs in the Technological Area have actively worked with considerable effectiveness in this field. In these regards, we have to recall the role played by Romano Del Nord «protagonist for commitment and clarity in identifying fundamental strategic lines for the cultural and professional training of architects, in the face of unprecedented changes of the environmental and production context» (Schiaffonati, 2021). Today, on the other hand, the axis of permanent and technical training is almost forgotten by ministerial and university policies for the reorganization of teaching systems, with a lack of strategic visions for bridging the deficit of skills that characterizes the area of architecture on the facing environmental and socio-economic challenges. Also and precisely in the dual perspective of greater interaction with the research systems and with the world of companies and institutions, and of that trans- and multi-disciplinary dimension of knowledge, methods and techniques necessary for the ecological transition of settlement systems and construction sector. Due to the high awareness of the Technological Area about the multifactorial and multi-scale dimension of the crises that recurrently affect our territories, SITdA has been configured since its foundation as a place for scientific and cultural debate on the research and training themes. With a critical approach to the consoling academic attitude looking for a “specific disciplinary” external and extraneous to the social production of goods and services. Finalizing the action of our community to «activate relationships between universities, professions, institutions through the promotion of the technological culture of architecture [...], to offer scientific-cultural resources for the training and qualification of young researchers [...], in collaboration with the national education system in order to advance training in the areas of technology and innovation in architecture» (SITdA Statute, 2007). Goals and topics which seem to be current, which Techne intends to resume and develop in the next issues, and already widely present in this n. 22 dedicated to the Circular Economy. A theme that, as emerges from the contributions, permeates the entire field of action of the project: housing, services, public space, suburbs, infrastructures, production, buildings. All contexts in which technological innovation invests both processes and products: artificial intelligence, robotics and automation, internet of things, 3D printing, sensors, nano and biotechnology, biomaterials, biogenetics and neuroscience feed advanced experiments that cross-fertilize different contributions towards common objectives of circularity and sustainability. In this context, the issue of waste, the superfluous, abandonment and waste, emerge, raising the question of re-purpose: an action that crosses a large panel of cases, due to the presence of a vast heritage of resources – materials, artefacts, spaces and entire territories – to be recovered and re-functionalized, transforming, adapting, reusing, reconverting, reactivating the existing for new purposes and uses, or adapting it to new and changing needs. Therefore, by adopting strategies and techniques of reconversion and reuse, of re-manufacturing and recycling of construction and demolition waste, of design for disassembly that operate along even unprecedented supply chains and which are accompanied by actions to extend the useful life cycle of materials , components and building systems, as well as product service logic also extended to durable goods such as the housing. These are complex perspectives but considerably interesting, feasible through the activation of adequate and updated skills systems, for a necessary and possible future, precisely starting from the ability – as designers, researchers and teachers in the area of Architectural Technology – to read the space and conceive a project within a system of rationalities, albeit limited, but substantially founded, which qualify the interventions through approaches validated in research and experimental verification. Contrarily to any ineffective academicism, which corresponds in fact to a condition of subordination caused by the hegemonic dynamics at the base of the crisis itself, but also by a loss of authority that derives from the inadequate preparation of the architects. An expropriation that legitimizes the worst ignorance in the government of the territories, cities and artifacts. Education in Architecture, strictly connected to the research from which contents and methods derive, has its central pivot in the project didactic: activity by its nature of a practical and experimental type, applied to specific places and contexts, concrete and material, and characterized by considerable complexity, due to the multiplicity of factors involved. This is what differentiates the construction sector, delegated to territorial and urban transformations, from any other sector. A sector that borrows its knowledge from other production processes, importing technologies and materials. With a complex integration of which the project is charged, for the realization of the buildings, along a succession of phases for corresponding to multiple regulatory and procedural constraints. The knowledge and rationalization of these processes are the basis of the evolution of the design and construction production approaches, as well as merely intuitive logics. These aspects were the subject of in-depth study at the SITdA National Conference on “Producing Project” (Reggio Calabria, 2018), and relaunched in a new perspective by the International Conference “The project in the digital age. Technology, Nature, Culture” scheduled in Naples on the 1st-2nd of July 2021. A reflection that Techne intends to further develop through the sharing of knowledge and scientific debate, selecting topics of great importance, to give voice to a new phase and recalling the practice of design research, in connection with the production context, institutions and social demand. “Inside the Polycrisis. The possible necessary” is the theme of the call we launched for n. 23, to plan the future despite the uncertainties and risks, foreshadowing strategies that support a unavoidable change, also by operating within the dynamics that, for better or for worse, will be triggered by the significant resources committed to the implementation of the Recovery Plan. To envisage systematic actions based on the centrality of a rational programming, of environmentally appropriate design at the architectural, urban and territorial scales, and of a continuous monitoring of the implementation processes. With the commitment also to promote, after each release, a public moment of reflection and critical assessment on the research progresses. NOTES 1 “Osservazioni del Coordinamento delle Associazioni Tecnico-scientifiche per l’Ambiente e il Paesaggio al PNRR”, 2021. 2 EU Guidelines, SWD-2021-12 final, 21.1.2021. 3 For instance, we can consider the 7,000 km of dismissed railways, with related buildings and areas. 4 The two seven-year activities of the Plan (1949-1963) promoted by Amintore Fanfani, Minister of Labor and Social Security at the time, represented both an employment and a social maneuver, which left us the important legacy of neighborhoods that still today they have their own precise identity, testimony of the architectural culture of the Italian twentieth century. But also a «grandiose machine for the housing» (Samonà, 1949), based on a clear institutional and organizational reorganization, with the establishment of a single body (articulated in the plan implementation committee, led by Filiberto Guala, with regulatory functions of disbursement of funds, assignment of tasks and supervision, and in the INA-Casa Management directed by the architect Arnaldo Foschini, then dean of the Faculty of Architecture), which led to the construction of two million rooms for over 350,000 families. See Di Biagi F. (2013), Il Contributo italiano alla storia del Pensiero – Tecnica, Enciclopedia Treccani. 5 From Quaderni of the Centro Studi INA-Casa, to Gescal and in the Eighties to the activity of CER. Complex theme investigated by Fabrizio Schiaffonati in Il progetto della residenza sociale, edited by Raffaella Riva. 6 Ferruccio De Bortoli underlines in Corriere della Sera of 15 May 2021: «The revolution of lifelong learning (which) is no less important for Brussels than the digital or green one. By 2030, at least 60 per cent of the active population will have to participate in training courses every year. It will be said: but 2030 is far away. There’s time. No, because most people have escaped that to achieve this goal, by 2025 – that is, in less than four years – 120 million Europeans will ideally return to school. A kind of great educational vaccination campaign. Day after tomorrow».

Sustainable finance and the construction industry: new paradigms for design development

Enabling sustainable growth is highly dependent on the ability of private capital to invest in projects capable of achieving sustainability objectives divided into the three economic, environmental and social components. The international financial system has defined criteria for assessing the sustainability of investments, also applicable in the construction sector. Still, these criteria do not always appear integrated with the sustainability assessment systems developed by the AEC (architecture, engineering and construction) industry. This article proposes reflections on the relationships between the sustainability indicators of sustainable finance and those typically used in the AEC industry with the purpose of identifying possible impacts on the disciplines involved in the design process.

ICT as innovative tools for circular planning in urban areas

The challenges related to the implementation of a circular economy at an urban scale have scarcely been studied or critically interrogated. This contribution aims to define the possible ways in which ICT can be used to stimulate and monitor circular actions on an urban scale. Four urban subsystems have been identified from which circular urban programmes can be linked, providing benefits for numerous categories of stakeholders. This work investigates the main possibilities offered by the use of ICT and the most recurrent functionalities associated with and implemented by digital tools. Finally, among indicators that already exist in the literature, this work identifies a strategy to monitor the effects of the actions on the ecosystem.