TURNING EMPTY OFFICE BUILDINGS INTO SUSTAINABLE SOCIAL HOUSING

This paper deals with the issue of the increasing presence of empty office buildings. Indeed, compared to the industrial buildings, that have been turned into public services (libraries, museums, etc.), into luxurious homes, etc. (thanks to their architectural character and / or their identity value for local communities), the reuse of offices seems to be quite a different and less attractive issue for designers, and of little interest to developers. This may depend on their more recent age and lack of any architectural or identity significance, as well as on their out of date systems and low energy performance. Nevertheless, they are preserved, even if vacant, because of their value as part of the property assets of the owners, as well as the high demolition costs. Furthermore, as most of empty buildings, they are easily occupied by squatters, who cause degradation and social problems, with companies forced to prevent these situations by hiring expensive security services. ENPAM R.E., the real estate management company of the national pension and social security institute for doctors and dentists, has a number of these buildings, which are no longer required for rent. This led them to promote a collaboration with Politecnico di Milano, aimed at verifying the possibility that different office building types be easily and properly adapted for residential purposes (like dwellings, hostels, temporary residences, etc.), by the development of educational projects. The idea of turning empty offices into homes to rent comes from a comparison between the large availability of the former and the lack of the latter. Thus, this strategy could become a way for meeting the great need for social housing (even for emergencies) without using any more land, but rather preserving a part of energy and row materials already embodied in the existing building structures. In addition, the large number and rather small size of such situations seems to guarantee limited local problems and a large spread of urban rehabilitation opportunities in the future. By the empirical activity on selected case studies, typological models and technological solutions for the adaptive reuse and refurbishment have been outlined. These models and solutions are expected to help the evaluation of the opportunities for reusing different types of buildings, as well as the promotion of high environmental sustainability goals, through works of transformation of building systems and equipment.