Complex Systems Approach to Adaptable and Sustainable Heritage Renovation and Valorization: Integrate, Optimize, Build in Sensitive Areas in Sardinia.

The proposal discusses methods and techniques that reduce the environmental impact of buildings over the lifecycle with the objectives of adaptive reuse of cultural heritage buildings. To achieve this goal, an integrated approach to design is used, which involves the analysis of questions, strategies, and actions in a complex system applied to a case study located in Sardinia, Italy. This place is the military battery of Capo d'Orso, once the avant-garde of military technology, today abandoned fossil trapped in millenary granites. Awakening these places, no longer as spaces dedicated to war, but as places full of history and open to new futures is essential. The new function, resulting from careful analysis of the heritage and the surrounding context, required the integration of new additional volumes. Three founding actions guided the project: Integrate, Optimize, and Build. The restoration project presented in the paper was shaped by crucial matters that cannot be overlooked, including energy and water saving, seamless integration between new and existing structures, the economic feasibility of construction, and efficient utilization of resources. These were the fundamental aspects that formed the backbone of the project. This paper describes in particular the process of integration and optimization of the structure of an added volume necessary for the re-functionalization of the area. The addition is located on top of the underlying historical vaults of pre-existence. Given the great testimonial value of the historic vaults, the design intention was to preserve and protect them. The work describes a multi-objective optimization approach which had evaluated different design alternatives according to constraints given by the context and the pre-established objectives, in order to optimize the structural element as much as possible meeting all the requirements: structural efficiency, visual permeability, lightness, low environmental impact, the possibility of assembly on a particular site hard to access. The study also shows methods to compare different technologies, configurations, and materials, starting from a structural scheme allowing the significant span and developing a finite element model for each configuration to evaluate structural performances. Moreover, the design process made use of prefabricated technologies, dry solutions, and modularity to allow easier construction on a site hostile to traditional mechanisms. Eventually, the solution to the initial problem it’s been able to achieve sustainability, comfort, and respect for the pre-existence without compromising on performance.