Restoration, Reuse and Energy retrofit for the enhancement of 20th Century Heritage: a learning experience on the Ivrea Site Inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List

This article illustrates a learning experience conducted in the context of the Atelier “Architecture heritage preservation and enhancement” held by the Politecnico di Torino. This experience dealt with the theme of functional redevelopment and energy retrofit of the Olivetti properties built in Ivrea in the 20th century. The value of these buildings, which represent different expressions of the Modern Movement and different building and functional typologies, has been recently acknowledged thanks to the addition of the site “Ivrea, industrial city of the 20th century” to the UNESCO World Heritage List. The Atelier used innovative, structured and internationally recognized pedagogical approaches and involved the application of projects economic evaluation methods. During the entire duration of the didactic activities, two approaches were implemented: the Whole Building Design (WBD), which constitutes an important reference for integrated and sustainable planning, and the Problem Based Learning (PBL), which guides the interaction between teachers, students and stakeholders throughout the Atelier. Starting from the Atelier learning objectives and the WBD and PBL approaches, theories, tools and methodologies of analysis were identified, paying particular attention to the integration of evaluation with restoration and other disciplines and to the role this may play in the definition of enhancement projects. Multiple and concrete results were achieved, both at an educational level, and with respect to the real impact on the public administration for the enhancement and future management of the UNESCO site. The Atelier made use of a Geographical Information System (GIS) created and designed in order to integrate the “building scale” of the single projects with the scale of the urban project, considering the whole set of architectures as a unitary system integrated with the territory. On the one hand, GIS allowed to collect and analyze all the detailed information concerning tangible and intangible assets and, on the other, to collect and analyze all the data concerning the productive, economic and social structure of the territory. This allowed identifying the demands useful to define the new functions of the buildings, thus formulating a shared project Masterplan. On this basis, more than 30 projects for restoration, functional redevelopment and energy retrofit were defined, their economic-financial feasibility was then evaluated, through the integration of economic-estimative tools (Life Cycle Costing - LCC and Discounted Cash Flow - DCF). Lastly, the most important stakeholders of the territory of Ivrea, involved in the Atelier, recognized the value and potential of the results achieved, confirming their actual feasibility.