Regenerating Public Housing in Italy with the Support of the Next Generation EU Fund. Lessons Learned from a Research by Design Experience

In Italy, the Next Generation EU instrument has made it possible to launch what could be optimistically defined as a new season for public housing after at least three decades of decreasing financial support. The PINQuA (National Innovative Program for Housing Quality) was supported with 2.8 billion euros, prompting a race among eligible public bodies to submit a proposal. Thanks to the funding, 159 projects of 271 presented were selected and are currently in the implementation phase. Quality and innovation, two concepts prominently fea- tured in the programme’s title, encourage a sense of optimism. However, they also require critical examination to understand how the issues related to these concepts have been interpreted in terms of proposal development, evaluation, subsequent selection, and implementation. If we focus on aspects related to the culture of design, can we consider this programme an opportunity for architecture as a dis- cipline? The research approach undertaken involved a direct participation in one of the projects: the urban regeneration of the Piazzale Visconti housing com- plex in Bergamo. The article reports the outcomes of a “reflection in action” [1] gained from a privileged observation point. Although referring to a single case, the research-by-design activity was an opportunity to get to the core of general issues, triggering a reflection on two complementary dimensions (1) the verifica- tion of project potential, expressed by the programme, (2) the understanding of the opportunities and certain problems intrinsic to the process.