Co-design Eco-Sustainable and Innovative Retrofit Scenarios in the University Context: The Experience of Bexlab

The pivotal role of young people in such a context is well highlighted in the New European Bauhaus initiative, aiming at the promotion of participative co-design processes to envision collectively, toward future sustainable buildings and cities. These are the challenges and aspirations of the experience shared in this paper, based on the settlement of a co-creation space in a university building in Florence, as a Living Lab for the definition and implementation of innovative and eco-sustainable retrofit processes. In the context of the Med-EcoSuRe project and in the space of the beXLab, an educational, but also interdisciplinary and collective activity has been launched to engage students in the retrofit design of the pilot building. The objective of the activity was the transfer of knowledge, through co-design, on the integration of specific performance requirements with architectural quality, constraints of the historical context, and human needs. Results show the opportunity to combine the experimentation of inclusive approaches in the field of building regeneration with the opportunity for students to understand the complexity of building ecosystems and environmental sustainability topics.