Rethinking building habitat for comfort and human wellbeing: digital technologies for nature-based design

Inspired by the ideas and principles of the ecological science to provide a new driver for an human and eco-centric approach to the architectural design process, this contribution will explore how nature-based solutions can maximize environmental sustainability and human wellbeing in buildings and cities, and how digital technologies can sustain their wide adoption. The spread of the Covid-19 pandemic was the occasion to re-discover that the perception of indoor discomfort can be mainly associated to the weak presence of natural elements (sun, air, water and vegetation) in the living built environment (from houses to offices), in particular in dense urban areas. Even if conceptually consolidated, the human and environmental positive benefits of the integration of nature-based solutions in the built environments still require to be scientifically acknowledged and measured to be fully integrated and managed in the design processes. The potential of nature-based solutions to reduce the negative impacts of buildings and built spaces on the health of people, and of the planet, can be strongly supported in the architectural design process by the most recent advancements of digital technologies for the building sector, from BIM to the Digital Twin. The paper presents critical reflections on how the need to ecological re-think architectural models towards a man-nature harmony can be addressed by exploiting the predictive capacity of Digital Twins in integrated design processes, envisioning healthy and sustainable built environments.