Sustainable construction and innovation

Learning outcomes

The course's objective is to provide participants with the framework, tools, and skills for designing innovative and sustainable buildings. The training program aims to guide students in independently selecting formal, technical, and system solutions, thus acquiring the skills necessary to carry out their professional activity according to sustainable criteria.
Sustainability and innovation must be interpreted in relation to the reality of an existing building heritage in which new constructions are reduced compared to building renovation or energy requalification interventions or minor interventions relating to building and/or plant subsystems.
The course topics address the national and international energy, environmental and legislative context related to climate change; the energy performance of buildings: sustainable materials; sustainable building envelope technologies; plant and renewable technologies at the building scale; reading and analysis of built architecture and best practices.

The relationship between the construction sector, sustainability and innovation is a vast ocean of notions, laws, standards, technologies etc. among which the professional must navigate to bring the project to port. In this context, it is necessary to chart the course and equip oneself with some tools capable of guiding the navigation, or the project, learning from time to time to face the difficulties that arise.
At the end of the course, the student will have acquired the skills to choose which sustainable and innovative design techniques and choices to apply independently in the professional path.

Course contents

The course will address the disciplines related to: CONTEXT, IPCC, climate change, comfort, energy costs); ENERGY, energy performance, heating, cooling, passive systems (NZEB ZEB); MATERIALS, LCA, Sustainability certification protocols (GBC, LEED, BREAM, PassiveHouse); CONSTRUCTION TECHNOLOGIES, structures, envelope (insulation, thermal inertia thermohygrometry); TECHNICAL SYSTEMS, systems and subsystems, renewable energy at the building scale; PROJECTS and BEST PRACTICES.

The course requires that the student deepens the topics covered through an exercise that may concern the renovation or redevelopment project of a case study provided by the teacher or proposed by the student. Alternatively, the student may deepen a specific architecture or technology, to be agreed upon on the project.
The student will have to prepare a presentation (power-point min 8 max 12 slides) in which to report the results of the exercise.

Prerequisites

Basic knowledge of building systems, building construction and built environment. Students will be guided in the learning process through discussion of the course content.

Reading/Bibliography

The teaching material consists of lectures and course handouts provided by the teacher, technical and specialist journals.

Textbooks

• K. Fabbri, Measuring the Air. Comfort, Mimesis, 2025
• K. Fabbri, The form and the formula, Libria Editore, Melfi, 2023
• K. Fabbri, Technical systems and architecture. History, knowledge, conservation, Altralinea, Florence, 2022
• K. Fabbri, Energy performance of buildings, DEI-Typography of civil engineering, Rome 2010

Preparatory readings

• S. Piraccini, K. Fabbri, Building a Passive House. The Architect's Logbook, Springer International Publishing Switzerland, 2018, ISBN 9783319699370
• FM Butera, From the cave to the ecological house. History of comfort and energy, EdizioniAmbiente, 2014
• Rem Koolhaas, Elements of architecture, Taschen, 2022
• D. Hawkes, Architecture and Climate. An Environmental History of British Architecture 1600–2000, Routledge, 2012, ISBN 9780415561877
• B. Calder, Architecture and Energy: From Prehistory to the Climate Emergency, Einaudi, 2022
• R. Banham, Environment and Technique in Modern Architecture, Laterza, Bari, 1995
• R. Banham, Architecture of the First Machine Age Paperback, Marinotti, Milan, 2005
• R. Banham, Architecture of the Second Machine Age. Writings 1955-1988, Marinotti, Milan, 2004

Teaching methods

The course includes lectures on the topics covered, classroom discussions on completed projects, architectures, materials and technologies, classroom reviews applied to the exercise.
The teaching method includes pedagogical paths Learn by Doing (learning by doing) and Flipped Classroom (inverted classroom) in order to provide students with the tools to independently evaluate and choose innovative technologies.

Assessment methods

The test consists of an oral discussion of the exercise papers. With regard to the application of the case study, the teaching method requires that the student develops his/her skills through independent research of sources: technical journals, design studios, etc. The reviews are aimed at clarifying doubts common to all students and solving specific cases.