Abstract:

ACE (Architecture Culture Environment) Seminars are an international event aimed at disseminate and exchange new design tools for managing the transformation of the built environment. The seminars focus on both new and existing buildings and consider the impacts at urban level towards a sustainable development. The A.C.E. initiative is promoted and organized by IEEM (Instituto de Estudos Europeus de Macau), Politecnico di Milano (Italy) and Albergue SCM (Macau) and attracts professionals and MSc students from Asia and Europe: this partnership finds in Macau it’s natural growing field as this town, since almost five centuries, has been the bridge between Europe and Asia and a worldwide recognized example of positive globalization and mixture of cultures.
The educational goal is to identify and implement advanced approaches and sustainable innovative technologies in architecture and urban planning based on integrated holistic design putting together the Architectural Synthesis and Engineering Analysis.
That means to approach architecture and urban design considering different issues: environmental impacts at different levels, energy and resource savings, air pollution, cost efficiency, ecc. This method should pervade the whole life cycle of a building, from design to final eventual disassembly, and the interactions with town nets and urban complexity. In this sense, the inter-linkages between each stage of the process (design, construction, use, maintenance, demolition) together with the broader, collective environmental effect of these components, are considered jointly and in the long-term
The paper will show the results of the first 3 editions of ACE Seminars (Macau 2006, Macau 2007, Lecco 2009) and the impacts of the dissemination activities of sustainable practices.

Keywords:

architecture, urban planning, sustainability, built environment.