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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generation systems, to be managed in the appropriate way to ensure a good
performance of the energy grid, and the appropriate energy savings. In the near future,
thanks to the European Directive on Nearly Zero Energy Buildings [EU 2010] all the
buildings are going to be transformed into energy generation systems.
According to this perspective, the city can be seen as a complex system where the
energy demand interacts with the energy generation that is based on different renewable
energy generation systems, which produce energy at different times and in different
ways.
The basic elements of this new scenario are buildings able to generate the energy they
consume (Nearly-Net Zero Energy Buildings), probably organised into cluster of
buildings that perform as a whole for achieving a Zero Energy Balance; the energy grid,
which manages to respond to a changing energy demand and generation; the city itself,
as the domain where the desired energy balance and performance should be achieved.
How to describe and to optimise such a complex system?
Due to the importance that the energy topic has gained, and due to its still increasing
centrality in our life (as a matter of technique, but also as a matter of culture), in a
scenario of distributed generation where buildings are able to generate energy, and
users can influence the energy consumption a lot through their behaviour patterns, any
possible theoretical approach should be able to see energy not only as a technical (or
technological) issue, but also as a cultural issue. This means that a common hybrid
ground where both the energy, other new issues and the traditional issues connected to
the city - as the material expression of certain community - development and behaviour,
can be analysed and discussed. Building up such a new common hybrid ground is one
of the most interesting cultural challenges of today.
Approach
When considering how buildings and cities of tomorrow should be conceived, how the
relationship between users (the community) and the city itself should be like, the above
expressed considerations suggest a necessary enlargement of perspective from the
building and single user scale, to the urban and community scale, so as to investigate
the city as a whole complex system. The relationships between all the elements -
artificial, and human - should be given attention as never before.
If the way to approach the energy problem is quite well known at the building scale, and
if the way a traditional city should work like is also well known, the way this single
approaches can be merged into a whole one is still to be built up. This new approach
requires new tools for investigation, modelling, analysis and planning.
The most complex issue is the ability of describing the city as a complex system of
networks and elements, according to a holistic perspective, which keeps together all the
single elements into a whole perspective: the ecological approach is the suitable base
for building up such a perspective.
The traditional urban design alone, although able to deal with the city as a complex
whole, is not sufficient to face the many challenges (mainly related to energy, but also to
urban mobility) we have to face nowadays. In particular, the traditional categories, taken
into account in the past for describing a good city quality index (including aesthetics),
have to be merged with new ones, which consider issues like the energy consumption
and generation.
Furthermore, with respect to the past, new technologies are helpful in ensuring a good
quality of life for people living in the cities, nevertheless, if each single technology is very
well know, the way a system of these technologies performs is still an issue to be
investigated.
In order to answer the knowledge demand imposed by the new future urban scenarios,
in recent years a lot of investigation has been done or is still ongoing.
