Valentina Puglisi

Environmental performance assessment for urban districts

Purpose – The article aims to describe the approach adopted within the framework of a multi-destination development project, the goal of which is to promote innovative technologies and methods to evaluate the environmental quality of an urban district under construction. Design/methodology/approach – The approach lies in the integration of methodologies usually applied on an urban scale (microclimate well-being and air quality, study of air quality), and/or to the individual building (acoustic comfort evaluation), never before adopted for assessment of plots or districts, especially in the dynamic evaluation of the variables identified, all objectively measurable. This method of analysis has been tested on an area of about 255,000 m2, located in the former historic district of the Fiera di Milano, where a series of typical urban functions (residential, commercial and trade) are inserted within a large public park. Findings – The success of the work is represented by indicators (air quality, acoustic perfo...

Market Innovation, Rational Housing Supply and Urban Quality at the Neighbourhood Scale

Innovation of product, process and markets are the three categories to assess the improvement of a sector. This document is aimed to provide a review of papers about innovation in housing market and analyses solutions adopted by the international market in terms of definition of attributes of housing products. Enlightening aspects linked to quality attributes of housing products and it has been tried to read a common scheme in any study analysed to provide solutions to set innovation hints to enhance market innovation in the sector. The idea of choice, user and buyer categories definition, assessment and rating system is the backbone of the paper, as the parallelism between marketing of industrial goods and services and built environment objects. Quality of the neighbourhood and the idea of an ex-post assessment is the theme behind the last case presented, based on a research made by ABC Department of Politecnico di Milano in a neighbourhood in Milano, aimed to assess its quality.

Building Envelope: Assessment and Certification of Its Performance — The Rating

High quality buildings are usually qualified by the real estate market with the term “Class A”. This definition, taken from models of financial rating, doesn’t correspond to a precise, objective and scientific identification of the elements that determine it: elements as the “flexibility of the surfaces”, “high standard plants”, the presence of “raised floors” or other features that characterize the building’s equipment, are generically listed. The envelope rating system’s aim is to spot elements that can objectively identify the level of “quality” of a building envelope. The purpose of this system is to support the design of building envelopes and it wants to clarify if indeed a redevelopment may or may not be functional in terms of technology in order to reduce energy consumption of buildings. Starting from the study of the national and international rating systems existing, five areas of analysis have been identified in the envelope rating system and each of them has been divided into groups and subgroups. Each area of analysis has received a weighted score according to its level of importance. In conclusion the rating system enables to obtain a total score that classifies the level of “quality” of the building envelope.

Analysis of the Differences Between Pollution Levels into a New and an Old District of a Big City Using Dispersion Simulations at Microscale

The new residential district ‘CityLife’ is under construction inside the city of Milan, northern Italy, replacing the old structure of the trade fair. It consists of relatively insulated blocks, surrounded by many gardens and commercial buildings and no car traffic at the surface. The objective of this study is to simulate and compare the pollution level inside this new area with a more common residential district located not so far away. High resolution simulations have been performed inside two domains – having linear dimension of approximately 1 km – using a microscale modeling system, taking directly into account the effects of buildings and street canyons to the atmospheric mean flow and turbulence. Emissions coming from car traffic (around the new district and inside the old one), underground traffic (emerging from ground-level openings in the new district) and heating systems (during winter) have been taken into account. Background values have been estimated from local measurements using a box model and added to the simulated concentration fields in order to produce a complete view of the local pollution levels. Both average levels of pollution at district scale and local behaviours into sub-zones of the two domains where similar activities are supposed to take place are compared showing the potential benefits inside the new district both in absolute terms and in percentage, setting in evidence which portion of the pollution can be reduced by local interventions.