This Master’s program is intended to prepare professionals to confront the complexity of the contemporary city promoting a new ecology of urban development: that is, new relationships between things, between natural and constructed landscapes, between buildings and energy sources, between sites of consumption and production, between public and private spaces, between spaces and inhabitants, between human beings and other forms of life. If the challenge of the new millennium is to produce architectures and cities capable of functioning in a new manner that sustains life and harmonious cohabitation on our planet, it is necessary to educate a new generation of professionals (designers, architects and engineers) that are able to plan and realize a new universe of objects, architectures and cities that are not only energy efficient, but are also able to generate energy locally and without hazardous waste, as well as to exchange both energy and information in a circuit of systemic relationships that positively link natural and constructed environments, spaces and inhabitants, and communities of humans and other living species.
Main focus of the design studio, as the place of synthesis of all the issues and competences at stake, is the design of a carbon neutral neighborhood, with a certain food sufficiency (at least in the production of fresh fruit and vegetables, through a system of diffused, horizontal or vertical urban farming), sustainable water management (through constructed wetland), sustainable mobility and waste management. A design that starting from the idea of the city as a public space, will move bottom up, through a slow knowledge movement well rooted on the ground, to achieve the ideal (but not utopian) complexity of an urban ecosystem.
Study Plan
• Introduction to the challenges of architecture and the protagonists and key projects in the field.
• Introduction to the challenges of urban sustainability and fundamental concepts of ecology, ecosystems, communities and territory .
• Introduction to methods of discerning the characteristics of an area and principles of participative planning processes.
• Introduction to model systems of energy efficiency, from the scale of the individual object to that of a large area: sustainable design, ecobuilding, power park (integrated ecocompatible energy localities), smart grids (integrated ecocompatible energy areas).
• Development of specific skills in the area of bioclimatic planning of buildings, through choice and size of passive technological systems (including facade design, greenhouses) and active systems (systems for energy efficiency and production).
• Design of photovoltaic systems: typologies and criteria.
• Development of specific skills in the field of bioclimatic planning of urban spaces and planning and bioclimatic use of urban green.
• Knowledge of the Building energy efficiency legislation (local, Italian and European), and knowledge of the energetic certification (energy labels).
• Use of software for simulation and evaluation of thermal and fluid dymanic considerations of buildings and open spaces (smart energy design).
• Principles of sustainable mobility.
• Elements of sustainable management of water in buildings and in cities, techniques of natural purification, and integration of constructed wetland and urban landscapes.
• Elements of economic evaluation of projects from the small scale buildings to large scale urban action.
• Tools for project representation and communication.
TEACHINGS
A – INTRODUCTION TO URBAN ECOLOGY
Theory of Architecture
- The Urban Issue
- The Biological Model
- Shelter, Food & Energy
History of the City and Tools of Urban Design
- Rome, the “big versus small” dimension
- Rome from Nolli’s map to the last master plan
- Public spaces in contemporary cities
Urban Footprint
- Tools of environmental impact assessment
- Sustainable waste management
- Sustainable mobility (Minimetro, quality bus, people mover, tapis roulant, cableway, inclined elevator etc.)
The Smart City Context
- Integrated City Design
- Multi-functional innovative objects
Theory of Architecture
- The Urban Issue
- The Biological Model
- Shelter, Food & Energy
History of the City and Tools of Urban Design
- Rome, the “big versus small” dimension
- Rome from Nolli’s map to the last master plan
- Public spaces in contemporary cities
Urban Footprint
- Tools of environmental impact assessment
- Sustainable waste management
- Sustainable mobility (Minimetro, quality bus, people mover, tapis roulant, cableway, inclined elevator etc.)
The Smart City Context
- Integrated City Design
- Multi-functional innovative objects
- People-city / people-people interaction contexts
- The City Consciousness
B – TOOLS AND METHODOLOGY OF ANALYSIS AND DESIGN
Participatory Planning Processes
- Exploration of the territory and development of sensible cartographies as a primary knowledge in a project development
- Involvement of inhabitants in the planning process through the building of "relational devices" on field and on the web
Bioclimatic Priciples
- Analysis of the context: vast and intermediate scale
- Climatic parameters: solar radiation, sun path, shading, climatic analysis, thermal zones
- Environmental comfort and optimization
- Performance categories of the building envelope
- Know-how and guidelines for settlement’s eco efficient design
Passive technological systems
- Passive solar heating and cooling
- Solar Greenhouses, Roof ponds, Earth sheltering, Trombe wall, Water Wall
- Natural ventilation
- Earth pipes, Ventilation Chimeys, Aspiration Atriums, Solar Chimneys, Shunts
Renewable Energy Plants
- Renewable energy resources: solar, biomass and wind potentials.- Software instruments to estimate solar and wind energy.- Thermal solar plants: devices and their efficiency. Planning and operation criteria.- Running a biomass program: devices. Planning and operation criteria.
- Energy savings in heating, cooling and electricity production. From heat recovery to co-generation.
- Energy Efficiency Systems: from low temperature distribution to condensing boilers to heat pumps. Small and large scale examples.
Photovoltaic systems
- Energy savings in heating, cooling and electricity production. From heat recovery to co-generation.
- Energy Efficiency Systems: from low temperature distribution to condensing boilers to heat pumps. Small and large scale examples.
Photovoltaic systems
- Design of photovoltaic systems: typologies and criteria
- Net Zero Energy Building
Computational Fluid Dynamics
- Small scale interactions between urban design and the micro-climate
- Micro-climate models. The surface-plant-air interactions in urban environment
- The ASV (Actual Sensation Vote)
- Ecotect the solar access
- ENVI-met: the PMV (Predicted Mean Vote)
Sustainable water management
- Rain and cities: what happens in the watershed?
- Tools and techniques for urban water management
- Constructed wetlands: an old innovative technique for urban water management
- Designing water management
Landscape design
- Introduction to landscape design and site analysis techniques
- Characteristics of plant material
- Rome’s network of urban and peri-urban parks
Green for Food
- Why to produce food in towns?
- What to produce
- How to produce
Design Studio/Project Work
- Main focus of the design studio, as the place of synthesis of all the issues and competences at stake, is the design of a carbon neutral neighborhood, where housing is sustained with local energy and local food production and careful water management. A design that starting from the idea of the city as a public space, will move bottom up, to achieve the ideal (but not utopian) complexity of an urban ecosystem.
C – PROJECT ASSESSMENT, EVALUATION AND COMMUNICATION
Economic evaluation
- Elements of economic evaluation of projects from the small scale buildings to large scale urban action
- Project investment, savings and payback times
- Esco: Energy Service Company
Environmental assessment tools
- LEED, BREEAM, GREEN STAR: building sustainability rating systems
- The life cycle topic
Cross media techniques and languages
- Tools for project representation and communication