Environmental Urban Design. New Teaching Perspectives between Urban Morphology and Smart Living

A city is an organism made of “fabrics”, Social, economic, cultural, smart and environmental fabrics, on whose interaction depends the form, the functioning and the very life of a city, its urban fabrics, its public spaces. Reading and designing the city of the 21st century is therefore a complex process that involves very different needs, interests and disciplines. The aim of this work is to develop an analysis and design methodology capable of acting as a catalyst for all the main players involved in the strategies of Sustainable Urban Design. At the basis of the methodological approach lies the concept of Public Space as the preferential place for reading, designing and living a city. Operationally, the proposed methodology rests on three main disciplinary areas (and three consequents working toolkits): Urban Surveying, Environmental Analysis, Urban Morphology. Through the first, conducted with graphic rendering softwares and laser scanner, it is possible to detect the physical forms of the city, to read its historical and material consistency. The second focuses its attention mainly on the microclimatic analysis of public spaces and outdoor comfort, using sophisticated environmental softwares such as Envi-met, LadyBug etc. Finally, the third area is particularly important. Urban Morphology, due to its multilayer character is the discipline capable of keeping all the others together, allowing them to interact. The tools adopted for this purpose are the Morphological Map, the Geographic Information System_QGIS, the Global Positioning System_GPS. The synergistic union of these three areas allows the development of a dynamic, multilayer and transdisciplinary methodology for urban analysis, very useful for guiding the regeneration and transformation processes of the contemporary city.