The theme of water in environmental design of urban renewal

The paper underlines the importance of the specific competences and skills of the research area in Architectural technology that can be used in water design and management, enhancing the different points of view as well as comparing different approaches within the technical design of factory plants and infrastructures. The interest toward the improvement of the consciousness of environmental issues has engaged the technologist in developing research on this crucial, which plays a basic role in our cities and territories. New legal and procedural frameworks support the organization of the building processes and design production, according to the transformation of the uses of settlement which requires a preventive assessment in terms of an environmental performances approach. Therefore, the aim of this contribution is providing a picture - from a methodological point of view - of the multi-scale and interdisciplinary features of the technological design that focuses on the close relationship between water and architecture, at the various scales of planning, design and management. It outlines some research projects carried out over recent years by the “Governance, design and exploitation of built environment” Research unit, in cooperation with various experts and supporting many public institutions and private enterprises. These projects concern different critical aspects of water design. The experimental project developed by the local authority for water management of the Varese County (ATO Varese), for instance, considers the wider area of Gornate Olona (VA) and focuses on the technical interventions of hydraulic engineering in relation to the quality of public spaces. Other researches refer to interventions of planning and design where the role of water is considered from three different points of view: - in environmental planning (the Master Plan, the Buffer Area Plan and the Basin Protection and Safety Plan of the Ticino River); - in urban renewal (the Master Plan for Vevera Torrent in Arona City and the Master Plan for the Stagnone - literally “large pond” - and Mothia Island in Sicily); - in protected areas (two projects of redevelopment in Ponti sul Mincio and in Corte Boschi, in Mantua Province). The last case study concerns a recent experience in China, with the involvement of an international board of experts for the environmental assessment of the Master Plan of E’erguna City, in Inner Mongolia. The overall picture that emerges from this reading highlights the many critical issues that remain in the Italian context, in particular with regard to the difficulties for the transferring of the technical and operational issues into an interdisciplinary and systemic approach. Vice versa, the international experience shows that process and design technologies can play a central role in supporting a challenging disciplinary integration, from a perspective of research and experimentation that can provide significant contributions both to the evolution of policies and regulatory frameworks for quality in construction and environment, and to the training curriculum and retraining. Water management is an expression of a wider and more demanding project: it is a structural component of the human living. Water requires a cooperative, multidisciplinary approach, towards the new paradigm of an eco-city nourishing nature, promoting creativity and innovation, increasing the quality of our life and the beauty of our architecture. For these reasons water should play a key role in a strategy aimed at reinforcing and enhancing our environment through sustainable urbanization. And for these reasons again water can be also a paradigm for a new approach to all the environmental components of the urban landscape - soil, air, green, energy, flora and fauna, ecosystems - that can contribute to a more sustainable development and regeneration of our cities and territories.