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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course, architecture should be promoting something new. “It is, indeed, our obsession
for novelty in the economic mechanisms of public relations that has led to entropy and
our quest for uniformity, albeit from different elements. The more we try to be different,
the more we are the same; everywhere will be made up of the same combination of
unique elements: this is the extreme form of urban entropy".
There is the question of the rapport between investment cost and management cost, and
the fact that savings are only possible (at least initially) through high investment and
building costs. This alone can discourage buyers, constructors and even public sector.
When the wishes of the customer and the end user diverge, as is often the case, there is
a tendency to pass on the secondary costs of the project (lights, water, heating) to user,
who has not been party to the decision-making process.
To drive home the issue of sustainability in the minds of the public and in ordinary
buildings, you don’t have to look for exceptional, avant-garde, ecological projects, of
which there are many examples. It would be more effective to provide practical examples,
illustrating the use of consolidated, affordable technologies in everyday use. If the
architecture of the buildings is said to “speak” to the beholder, the "ecological" features
of the buildings have remained relatively tight-lipped, in that they fall within the
conventional standards and are only deemed to be “speaking architecture” because they
were made in collaboration with very well-known categories within the housing sector.
It is, indeed, the latter that is proving to be of advantage to the buildings, since they are
able to clearly testify that no "ecological" or "energy-saving" style requires a uniform look
or set of universally valid rules other than that of being rational and not harmful (or at
least non-polluting) to the environment. In this regard, the contradictions that often exist
between environmental issues and the structure of a building are often of a purely virtual
nature.
As a consequence, construction companies are starting to update production to achieve
this aim. However, the mainstream market does not always follow this trend; indeed, in
some countries, such as Italy, new buildings are judged by parameters that have little or
nothing to do with the modern concept of eco sustainability. In fact, in geographic areas
where natural stones and concrete have been used for centuries, only modern
implementations of these traditional materials are now used in construction and the
demand for eco-sustainable resources is quite low. It must be noted that even in these
countries, thanks to timely investments and research in innovative production processes
of prefabricated wood, some companies are already able to propose building solutions
that satisfy eco sustainability standards as well as low maintenance costs and durability.
So the question is: do the Italian users have, knowledge of the concept of eco
sustainability related to housing?
“I’ll have wood please. It is light, flexible, recyclable, renewable and safe. Trees can be
used to build temporary houses and three times as many trees can be planted in their
place. When in four or five years those temporary houses are taken down they, too, can
be replaced by a forest and the wood recycled. This is what working with nature is all
about. Concrete, on the other hand, is less elastic and more vulnerable”.(2)
Assumption
Italy does not boast a long tradition of houses made of wood. It is more of a niche
building sector and confined mainly to rural constructions in the north. The spread of
concrete buildings during the last century gradually led to the phasing out of the more
