P r e – E x i s t e n c e s a n d E n v i r o n m e n t a l S u s t a i n a b i l i t y
555
PRE-EXISTENCES AND ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY
Giovanna Vella
1
& Tiziana Basiricò
2
1
Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, “KORE” University, Enna
2
Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, “KORE” University, Enna
Abstract
Building recovery plays a leading role to identify existing resources and support their
preservation, improvement and development, respecting both the cultural and
environmental context and, moreover, building’s typological and constructive features.
Through some case-studies, this paper faces the subject of eco-friendly building
recovery intended both as an opportunity for energetic and environmental renovation
and as a moment of cultural reacquisition. After focusing on sustainability issues in
recovery intervention, this paper addresses the point of disused and obsolete railway
building heritage. In particular the intervention applies methodologic approach to an
abandoned housing complex that lends itself to the new allocation for halls of residence
in the service of Kore University of Enna, a young growing research hub settled in the
middle of Sicily and Mediterranean Basin.
Belonging to the Nineteenth-century railway station, this complex was originally intended
as dorm and support structure to be used by the train crew and turns out to be a
strategic place both for its position, a few miles from the University, and for its possible
links through the nearby station, included in high-speed rail program.
Keywords:
Recovery and renovation of existing building heritage, energy-saving and
environmental sustainability, railway building, hall of residence
Introduction
The increase in pollution, the temperature growth and the rampant consumption of non-
renewable natural resources are among the most critical issues of our times. Facing
sustainability in the building sector means focusing on the phases characterizing the
process, involving an input and output flow of resources that should be evaluated on the
basis of the type of intervention realized. It is thus clear what the sustainable approach
proposes to the construction field: a balance of the resources involved in the intervention
and useful to the assessment of the effect to the related environmental system, since the
achievement costs until the costs of eventual disposal of the construction.
From this point of view, a sustainable perspective of the building process cannot be
focused regardless of what is yet built, on the contrary it must deal with specific
problems implied by the intervention on the pre-existing structures. The recovery poses
the need to compete with existing products, often characterized by historical,
architectural, material and technological relevance.
Paradoxically, the more "sustainable" intervention reveals to be the most complex, fully
entering the debated tradition-innovation dialectic, since a long time fulcrum of
considerations and interventions related with recovery and reuse. Therefore, the
renewed attention posed today in the “recovery-sustainability” union deserves some
considerations that allows to frame the path that led to the current awareness. In the
case of existing buildings, a large number of parameters takes over, which must be
assessed in order to define with completeness the greater or minor sustainability of a
material or a recovery technique, including compatibility with the construction techniques
and existing materials.
In this sense the core is represented by the ability to make, as far as possible, reversible
interventions and capable of ensuring flexibility in both the intended use and the
technological solutions.
