The flexibility in social housing rehabilitation: the case of Preturo (Aq)

The present research is based on the study of three settlements situated in the neighbourhood of L’Aquila. L’Aquila extends over 466 squared km and its urban organization is nowadays constituted by the principal town and 68 hamlets; the ATER, that are the object of our research, are situated close to Monticchio, Preturo and Cansatessa; around them they have been constructed 19 post-earthquake CASE and MAP settlements which present the same problems of their hamlets: lack of essential services and isolation. Our proposal of re-qualification is based on the city history and origin and on the outputs of present situation analysis, in order to re-establish a new identity of the city. The main target is to define a development project able to give liveability back to the settlements considered, in accordance with a scattered territorial reality and with its evolving needs and problems. It is also necessary to reconstruct liveability of the settlements considering the historical origin of the city - L’Aquila foundation can be considered one of the most extraordinary urban event (Lavedan), due to the special link between the original castra and its part of city and thanks to the presence in every neighbourhood of a square, a church and a fountain - and the possibilities emerging from hidden realities. The proposal is defined by a scalar process (from the urban to the building and component scale) and a circular process (from the urban re-qualification, with new centralities and standards, to the production of components able to fulfil with flexible building methods and to the regeneration of landscape and cultural and functional heritage thanks to the redefinition of territorial uses and resources). The construction of a new city identity takes place combining the re-evaluation of historical heritage with the proposals of new centralities and aggregation points in order to heighten citizen life quality. We defined “accessibility ranges”, characterized by the presence of services, the environmental context, and the settlement framework, which can be connected in order to have a sustainable territorial functioning. Those ranges are the centralities to which can be connected infrastructures or network services, defining an adequate and efficient functional mix. The strategies are related to the material and immaterial CONNEXION (mobility), that is the times and modes citizens can move all over the town and to ACCESSIBILITY and ENJOYABILITY (liveability), that is the possibility to take advantage not only of public and private services but also of green areas and aggregation and socialization points. The final result is the transition from the presence of multiple centres to a polycentric structure, in which the different settlement levels, neighbourhood and town, can interact and dialogue each other. The strategies for proposing a technical quality are basically focused on programs of energetic efficiency and adjustment of standards to user needs. The first one, thanks to adequate technical solutions, involves the analysis of urban microclimate, its implications in terms of outdoor comfort and the extent of its effects on indoor comfort. The second one implies building reconstruction by means of re-qualification in reply to constantly mutable needs, largely conditioned by seismic risks. This program involves innovative building and component techniques able to project flexible housing in order to increase use possibilities of pre-existing houses. The strategies to define a territorial re-generation and construction of a new landscape emerge from the necessity of a post-earthquake reconstruction; it was thought to promote local productive chains (industrial ecology) able to trigger locally social and economic development in accordance with sustainable criteria. An analysis about local resources can define a possible future scenario: the primary and building sector necessarily integrated to transform local resources and waste into new resources, using new methods (urban metabolism) that consider the territorial image as functional and cultural landscape.