INTEGRATED APPROACH TO SUSTAINABLE BUILDING DESIGN PROGRAMMING

This paper aims at analysing the relationship between aesthetic and technological aspects in the design process. ‘Sustainability’ is often a label associated mainly to technological systems aimed at achieving energy efficiency, without considering architectural quality of spaces or environmental and sustainable performances as a holistic approach. Since buildings are working as systems and not as simple sums of elements, this paper proposes an integrated building design methodology, which embeds and merges technological, environmental and esthetical aspects. To this end, the paper presents the design teaching and research experience carried out with the students of final atelier of the Master of Sustainability, at the Polytechnic of Turin in 2014. In this atelier students were asked to design a building for the Architecture Faculty for The University of Melbourne. During this final atelier, a number of tools were applied throughout the overall design development to helps students in developing projects able to integrate aesthetic, environmental and technological aspects. For instance, one of these tools was the site microclimate matrix, which is a valid instrument for precisely defining master plans organizations, or placing volumetric solutions on sites, following a decision making process based on site-specific functional, technological and environmental aspects. This tool, as well as others that were adopted in the atelier, demonstrated to provide students the ability of developing projects characterised by efficient technical solution and high creative architectural designs.