Integrated Strategy for Buildings and Urban Environment towards Sustainability

The energy crisis has imposed a new approach to the study of the built environment, based on the close link between the building and the surrounding environment, especially for energy exchanges. Recently, this awareness has led to the design of new settlement models: the eco-neighborhoods. The traditional approach to energy requalification of existing buildings usually do not concern the surrounding environment. Integrated interventions on buildings and urban surroundings can be an opportunity to make cities sustainable in energy, environmental and social terms, thus improving the life quality of citizens. This approach was tested at an educational level through the study conducted on a case study of the Sicilian city of Enna by students of the Faculty of Architecture of local Kore University, exploiting the peculiarities of the existing built environment. Comparing the energy analyzes conducted on buildings with two different scenarios of interventions on: only the buildings; the buildings and the neighboring urban space, the last scenario allows demonstrating the effective change in the environmental conditions of the urban space on the hygrothermal behavior of buildings and therefore the benefit in terms of sustainability and energy consumption. The methodology innovation is aimed at a new design concept focused on the composition of the urban morphology, the technological characteristics of the buildings and the neighboring urban spaces and the related environmental relationships using natural resources (sun, wind, water and urban green).