When Houseful goes on the book “Architectures for EU Next Generation Cities – Challenges, Key Drivers and Research Trends”

As a result of climate change, cities are experiencing increasingly complex challenges that heavily impact people’s living conditions, health, and well-being. It is only in recent times that an increase of social awareness about the correlation between the increase in anthropic-generated emissions and the rise in global temperatures has been recorded, primarily resulting from evidence-based demonstrations by the scientific community.

The book “Architectures for EU Next Generation Cities – Challenges, Key Drivers and Research Trends” – by Jacopo Gaspari, and Ernesto Antonini from the Department of Architecture at the University of Bologna and published by Italian publishing house Franco Angeli – attempts to provide an overview of the primary factors influencing the evolution of European urban environments and their needs, while keeping an eye on the possible fallout on local policies – both within the EU and beyond – as well as global trends.
Four priority topics are discussed: city resilience, the energy demand of cities and buildings, future needs, and the potential for applying circular models.
This book is not a final destination but rather a starting point for future design actions to address the challenges, factors, and trends influencing the liveability of tomorrow’s cities.

The section “Factors influencing the social perceptions and choices towards circular renovation in the housing sector”, is dedicated to the Houseful project thanks to the collaboration between the University of Bologna and the Consortium of this EU-funded project, consolidated on the occasion of the International Conference “Next Built 2022” that took place last May.

At “Next Built 2022”, Houseful presented the paper “Factors influencing the social perceptions and choices towards circular renovation in housing sector”, whose content has been selected by the University of Bologna to take part to the new book by Jacopo Gaspari and Ernesto Antonini. ICONS supported the drafting of this chapter and acted as coordinator among the Houseful partners involved in this activity and the University of Bologna.
In this chapter, the Houseful partners alchemia-nova, WE&B, Neues Leben, and Agencia de l’Habitatge de Catalunya, offer a multidisciplinary field of investigation, dealing with social and behavioral aspects related to energy use and circular solution in the residential sector.

The book is available in open access here: https://series.francoangeli.it/index.php/oa/catalog/view/892/735/5208