Fare ricerca durante la pandemia: un'esperienza di riuso creativo Making research during the pandemic: an experience of creative reuse

The experience of the pandemic has significantly changed our approach to the way we do research. On one side we had no possibility to travel and meet colleagues in person or to visit buildings and archives, on the other side the necessity to make research activities with the few available resources and materials forced a creative use of the little that was available and to use it to the best. In a certain sense it was a great opportunity (perhaps unique and unrepeatable) to experiment with recovery and creative reuse solutions in research. This paper describes two applied research activities developed during the pandemic using locally available materials along with some necessary items purchased on the Amazon global market. The first activity was the construction of a small passive greenhouse made of recycled materials and components. An existing wooden bookshelf from IKEA was used for the vertical structure, while the roof structure was made by reusing and adapting some wooden beams from an experimental activities performed with some students of the Master School in Architecture. Internal temperatures in the greenhouse as well as external ones have been measured for some days to test the thermal behaviour of the passive system. The second activity was focused on reducing energy losses through windows by reusing bubble wrap packaging material. The reduction of the heat losses through the glass panel was calculated using a simplified procedure to obtain the thermal resistance through surface temperatures measurements. Both experiences continued even after the lockdown period and led to interesting research insights.