METHODS AND TOOLS FOR THE PROJECT OF ADAPTIVE REUSE OF VACANT OFFICE BUILDINGS

This essay defines design guidelines to convert vacant office buildings into housing and other related urban facilities, according to the principles of energy performance upgrading, functional mix and urban regeneration. The portion of dismissed office buildings has recently assumed considerable importance and reveals an evident critical issue of the contemporary city, as demonstrated by several researches and international policies aimed to re-use this resource. The scope of investigation is the city of Milan and the survey method focuses on a detailed quantitative and qualitative analysis of the vacant stock. The work summarizes the factors that show the chances of these buildings for conversion, such as location, urban context, prevalent building types, constructive systems and installations. The results of this multi-criteria survey allows to identify the suitable part of the stock able to conversion into housing and to show the useful settlement for a successful strategy of transformation, such as the most wanted house types, the new form of share-working, the actors involved in the process and the necessary political support. The paper also proposes a catalogue of possible strategies/actions to apply in the design, construction and management of the adaptive reuse projects. The result is the definition of the principles, drivers and indicators, both at urban and at building scale, that support the aims of the transformations: urban density, coherence to the context, environmental sustainability, social “convenience”, functional and social mix, spirit of community, adaptability and flexibility, facility of use and maintainability. These targets express the contemporary concept of “quality of living”, which requires to integrate the social, the environmental and the economic aspects characterizing the structure of the word “sustainability”. The outcome of this paper allow to identify the factors of a method to carry out in a scenario that is less considered by the design point of view, but that define an important portion of the architectural research.