Minor Building Environmental Impact Assessment in the Early Design Phase. A Quality-Oriented Methodology with Supporting Tools

The expression ???environmental sustainability of buildings and building locations??? means much more than compliance with current laws and regulations. To date, supporting methodologies and tools for evaluating public and private projects subject to EIAs (Environmental Impact Assessments) already exist in literature; on the contrary, they miss out on minor architecture projects. With reference to this lack, particular attention occurs in locating minor building projects and works, most of all because a generic location may be populated by several minor buildings that, if globally considered, may generate impacts higher than landscape impacts generated by a stand-alone complex subject to EIA. In evaluating objects not subject to EIAs, quantification of environmental variables in play is not always possible, most of all because current available data in literature refer to wider scale levels. The present paper aims at introducing a quality-oriented and feasibility-oriented methodology, intended for being applied in the early design phase for evaluating minor building projects. The introduced methodology aims at setting off convenience preliminary utility analyses, e.g. accessibility analysis, economic feasibility studies, landscape impact, etc., too often penalised if compared with relevant energetic issues. The methodology is addressed to two specific figures, that will be declared in the paper. Methodology fundamentals are based on three logical steps, e.g.:- listed below: (1) Evaluation of project need(s); (2) Definition of project function(s) and connection(s); and (3) Selection of the most reasonable alternative. Unusual tools in the common minor building practice are also introduced as a support, e.g. conceptual map, sample survey, territorial analysis technique, demand assessment, public opinion poll, survey of attitudes, respondent screener, pairwise comparison technique, multi-criteria matrix, etc. The methodology has been tested on case studies.