Retraining of social housing in Pavia

In the phase of reconstruction following up the 2nd World War, in Italy numerous districts of social houses were built in the suburbs with traditional techniques to lodge the lower class people evacuee from the damaged buildings of the historical city centres, promoting the city renewal with demolition and reconstruction of whole blocks and installing new uses (shops, services and expensive houses). Due to the evolution of social and architectural debate, since the 1970s in Italian historical centre many city blocks of residential buildings were refurbished by public administrations in order to promote the renewal of crumbling areas and to guarantee the permanence of lower class people. Nowadays the municipality of Pavia – an average city in the Po valley – is promoting projects of integrated retraining of the social housing districts of the 1950s. Standard strategies of refurbishment can be elaborated for these buildings, with diversified levels of intervention, from the district up to the single flat. Originally realized in the suburbs and deprived of services, these settlements have been integrated in the urban context after the city expansion. Having been built with old standard, today these quarters show typological, environmental and technological lacks: -the flats are small, they have smallest kitchen and toilets and they aren’t flexible; -the buildings are particularly lacking in thermal and acoustic comfort and in accessibility; they show signs of decay mainly due to lack of maintenance and scarce insulation of the building envelope; -the external areas are small, they miss of maintenance; there are no places for children game; the green areas are ruined by car-parking. Furthermore these council-house quarters are now inadequate to answer to the needs of present users characterized by a long permanence in the flats and a progressive aging, very far from the pristine typology of families. Nowadays the simple typological plan of the buildings, the basic constructive system of load-bearing perimeter walls and interior reinforced concrete pillars, the moderate decay of building materials, together with the undecorated architectural image, offer opportunities of functional, environmental and technological renewal, through building refurbishment and addition. The aims of this research are to plan solutions to improve the quality of the existing buildings using non-invasive techniques, to equip the flats with the lacking spaces adding new volumes realized with light-weight techniques, and to study system of insulation suitable for reduce energy consumption for heating and cooling.