La sostenibilità in edilizia: le prime scelte programmatiche, le innovazioni tecnologiche, gli orientamenti della ricerca

The construction and building sector is responsible for a considerable part of the world consumption of resources and contributes sensibly to the environmental pollution. The crisis of the traditional, occidental model of growth, which outbroke in the early seventies, has revealed the need to innovate in depth the way of designing, constructing and managing buildings. In this sector, as in many others, there have been great technological innovations, mainly promoted by the most advanced countries, also interested in the development of potentially very rich market. Goes along with this the spreading of the way of designing buildings and conceiving their use which is generally called “bioclimatic architecture”. This approach derives from the construction practices of the past: in fact the traditional construction knowledge results from the agelong refinement of balanced solutions to the requirements of comfort, economy and respect of environment. This contribution runs through the main points of the elaboration of the sustainable development concept and its application to the building sector. Through the evolution of regulations, financing programmes, researches and innovations, it highlights (points out) how the attention has (been) extended in the building sector from the energy savings (still now the most important purpose) to other themes, such as the reuse and recycling of components, the retrofit of buildings, the healthiness of indoor and outdoor environment, the ecology of building materials.