Keeping It Sustainable. The Energy Efficiency of Twentieth-Century Architecture

Before being accused of poor energy efficiency, modern architecture was often considered unable to guarantee a minimum of well-being to users, without the help of heating and air conditioning systems. This thesis has been widely used by critics of the Modern Movement (Banham 1969), especially in comparison with nineteenth-century architecture (Collins 1975). The pan de verre of the Cité de Réfuge is a striking example: the large façade without openings was the subject of self-criticism by Le Corbusier himself, which stigmatized the undeniable waste of energy necessary to obtain a minimum climatic comfort inside. In 2014, the restoration of the building addressed this problem, attempting to balance conservation of architecture, energy demand, users' well-being (Gallo & Fernandez 2014). However, this judgment of "constitutive" energy inefficiency of modern architecture has been rarely supported by a quantitative analysis of the thermal inertia of the building envelope (Lucchi 2017) and the indoor climatic well-being of users. Energy retrofit interventions often rely on parameters defined for newly designed buildings, which already proved to be unable to describe the specificity of each building (Ryhl-Svendsen et al. 2020), especially when it is the result of an experimental architectural project with high social content, as the University dormitories "Collegi" of Urbino are. However, some experiences, even on large complexes (Graf 2012), have recently demonstrated a growing interest in research for this issue. Energy efficiency has thus gained a place alongside other collateral issues to the conservation of the modern such as safety, accessibility for disabled, the need for a specific regulatory framework (Mazzarella 2015) for this recent and vast heritage. Research carried out under the Keeping it Modern grant since 2015 also confirms this trend as demonstrated, for example, by the Conservation management plans drawn up for Sydney Opera House (Crocker 2017), FAUUSP in São Paulo (Pinheiro et al. 2017), Het Schip in Amsterdam (Van Diemen et al. 2018), Nakashima Arts Building in Pennsylvania (Bargues-Ballester et al. 2017), Eames House in Los Angeles (Matarese et al. 2019).