Z E M C H 2 0 1 2 I n t e r n a t i o n a l C o n f e r e n c e
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the needs for dwelling. Moreover, sustainability changes the conception of the home and
the city, moving towards three different dimensions: environmental, social and economic.
We think that only an integrated approach to these themes can change the way to
organise spaces and functions inside contemporary houses. The proposals for the
housing projects presented in this paper are based on the study of settlement and
building types suitable for the transformations of the society. These studies have been
elaborated within the HousingLab - DiAP - Sapienza of Rome1 and constitute the
experimental phase of our research, which aims defining design criteria for new
residential building projects within urban peripheral areas. The design criteria moves
from the assumption that the new settlements should be based on social, economic
and environmental sustainability at all project scales, from urban layout to aggregation of
buildings, organization of residential units and selection of appropriated technologies and
materials. Based on the above considerations, four aspects have emerged.
The first one is the design of living units that are not self-contained while being
integrated with existing buildings. New systems of public space, services and houses
may create a network in the urban context to enhance the related potential and at the
same time to enable different levels of social life.
The second aspect concern with the relationships between the new constructions and
the urban and natural landscape to avoid the current formal and linguistic homologation.
The third aspect concerns with the need to design multiple housing solutions, with
variations and flexibility in order to create urban systems that are suited for a vast array
of people. The fourth aspect is related to renewed attention to prefabrication, depending
in particular on the need to reduce energy consumption and efficiency in manufacturing
that allows industrial approaches to building production, borrowed from other sectors of
the manufacturing industry.
Building types and living unit
Innovating the organization of buildings, by keeping into account environmental as well
as living conditions of inhabitants, constitutes one of the tools to achieve a better quality
of the urban environment and life of individuals. The buildings that strive to meet the
social demand – which is today very much diversified and continually changing – should
provide a large variety of dwellings in terms of:
- Type and size allowing variability of interior space arrangement and dimensions;
- Long-term flexibility to allow the possibility of re-combining and dividing the living units;
- A System to accommodate the request of any small increase of volume.
Lastly one of the essential aspects that should be considered during the design phase of
living units is the customization of the home space to accommodate the different tastes
an lifestyles of his in-habitants.
Homes and customization
One of the main issues of contemporary housing projects is to develop sustainable and
low-cost solutions for houses with formal and environmental qualities that can be
customized and tailored to individual needs. To meet the demands of a large and
heterogeneous public, these projects must refer to processes regulating the production
of goods for mass consumption similar to those used for airplanes, cars, and other
objects of design. In fact, inside the factory, the prefabrication process reduces the
waste of the raw materials by exact computation of material required. Recycling in fact is
easier than building on site, and the constant search to improve the quality of each
component constitutes a guarantee of a building’s performance, above all in terms of
energy consumption. Finally, producing a building in a factory and then constructing it on
site, in a short period of time, reduces the impact of the job site itself, with its well-known
risks of acoustic and environmental pollution, and the dangers associated with
construction equipment. But how to reconcile industrialization and mass production with
the need for individual expression or with the desire to freely give form to a home, modify
it, and define its character according to individual taste and the characteristics of its
