Low cost and energy saving housing design

The work presents a comprehensive urban design proposal including bio-climatic techniques to modify both outdoor and indoor thermal performance for new social housing in urban areas. More specifically, the presented case study is located inside a dismissed military area, the urban area Casaralta-Sani of the northern part of the city of Bologna. The historical formation of military-industrial areas is limited to the “inner” relations among buildings, while neglecting the interactions with streets and plots in the structure of surrounding urban textures. Therefore urban sustainable connections and pedestrian paths linking the area to the remaining part of the city, as well as urban (re-)design of outdoor areas -by exploiting natural elements- have been regarded as the first steps to improve overall microclimatic conditions in this part of the city. From urban constraints to the building scale, a new, modular, residential housing prototype has been studied for further investigations at technological level. In the construction of this experimental building different integration hypotheses among geometrical-structural elements and envelopes’ variables, have been analysed, following a sensitivity analysis aimed at the comprehensive study of the thermal performance of the building. In the search for an integrated approach considering technical and construction features, as well as functional and formal aspects, the implementation on the present study case can lead to feasible solutions for low-cost and high energy performing buildings in urban areas.