Green and Healthy Solutions in Post-pandemic Housing: Fid-Bau Portal

Green and Healthy Solutions in Post-pandemic Housing

Amadei, Fabrizio / Romano, Giada / Giampaoletti, Marco

Italy has an obsolete building stock that needs to be rethought according to passive bioclimatic solutions aimed at enhancing courtyards, atriums, and intermediate spaces, refunctionalizing dwellings to make them more versatile, and the whole building stock, increasing open spaces and vegetation cover. People have spent 60–90% of the time in their homes during the COVID-19 pandemic, and passive ventilation and cooling, falling under the criteria of Green Housing, can play an important role in safeguarding healthy housing for the fulfillment of well-being (Tucci, Green building and dwelling. Altralinea Edizioni, Firenze, 2018). Energy saving, optimizing the potential of building materials, and the environment where the building stands while achieving greater well-being are no longer contradictory demands but one implies the other (Ronchi and Tucci, Pandemie e alcune sfide green del nostro tempo. Fondazione per lo Sviluppo Sostenibile, Rome, 2020). One of the valid technological-environmental strategies to ensure that housing has the requirements for an healthy living is related to the design of appropriate ventilation systems, which can play an important role in the control, prevention, and spread of infections: systems for the natural movement of air masses by means of bioclimatic natural ventilation solutions integrated with opening elements in the building facades, in their role-filtering meaning for the management of flows of various kinds in and out and the fulfillment of energy efficiency, lighting, and acoustic requirements, will be able not only to play a major role in passive bioclimatic solutions and promote thermo-hygrometric comfort, but also ensure the space flexibility, based on the assumption that housing should provide relevant protection from the prevailing potential hazards, and that it needs the rethinking of spaces according to new requirements of contemporary living (Naglaa and Ehab, Environ Res 193:110471, 2021). Crucial improvements to buildings will insist on the mixity of spaces and functions, with the creation of areas within the dwelling capable of transforming according to needs and stages of the day, rethinking connective spaces in order to create more smart and functional solutions (World Health Organization, Housing and health guidelines. WHO, Geneva, 2018).