Abstract:

“You do not enjoy the seven or seventy-seven wonders of a city, but the answer it gives to your question” (Calvino, 1972). More than half of the world's population lives in cities and for this reason they are now considered the true driving force of growth, the application field of development principles. The new guidelines dictated by the New European Bauhaus and Green Deal focus attention on a parallel idea of the city, a circular city in which stimuli are converging that are inextricably marked by an awareness of sustainability, which calls for effective and transversal responses from the public and private sector based on the implementation of resilient and circular interventions in terms of the use of resources. The smart city concept, introduced back in the 1990s, has been superseded by a model of urban development/evolution with which at least one sustainability objective must be associated (UN Agenda 2030).

The contribution illustrates the methodological lines of a Research-Action experimentation implemented within an Erasmus Plus project between the University of Campania "L. Vanvitelli" and the Polytechnic University of Valencia. It outlines and develops the scientific and didactic methodologies, phases, objectives and benefits induced by a technological design workshop experience aimed at the participatory energy retrofit of the "Viviendas Sociales Antonio Rueda" neighbourhood in Valencia (ES). This is a unique case in which the postulates and formal resources of the International Modern Architecture Movement are experimented in the production of social housing. The neighbourhood, due to its small and circumscribed size and the combination of urban functions and social aggregations, becomes a suitable field of investigation for experimentation, in which to verify extremely peculiar social, economic and environmental dynamics.

The project experience in the field, outside the university classroom, with a view to international comparison (group work with colleagues from other universities and nationalities) is an important strength of this experimental work. The training model is that of Schank, based on Goal-Based-Scenarios (GBSs), i.e. simulations in which knowledge is acquired in a first phase and immediately afterwards (or sometimes simultaneously, depending on the different cases) concrete objectives are pursued by applying them. Starting from the benchmarking parameters of the European Smart-cities and Communities study (2007), it has been possible to realise a passage of scale, from the city to the neighbourhood, which is identified as a complex but at the same time controllable piece of the city, in which the feasibility of the interventions, and the development dynamics triggered, can be immediately verified. Technological advancement and 'circular' practices applied first to buildings and then to the neighbourhood open up a wide field of investigation, setting up connection networks and flows of matter, energy, information and people in a way that is as innovative as it is extremely concrete and close to real-life.

Finally, the design experimentation identifies the most significant elements, also by comparing them with current transformation trends in European neighbourhoods, thus identifying the performance parameters for consciously orienting development prospects and providing a concrete response to the population and at the same time a replicable operational model.

Keywords:

Architectural identity, technical knowledge, material and immaterial flows, Goal-Based-Scenarios, Research-Action.