Teaching and learning energy transition: Evidence from Rome

Cities consume 75 per cent of global primary energy and emit above 50 per cent of the world’s total greenhouse gases. For all their differences, Mediterranean cities share some of today’s most urgent urban challenges, such as climate change, environmental degradation and loss of biodiversity, sprawl and gentrification, migration and marginalisation, as well as shrinking economies and political turmoil. Policies at all levels call for more sustainable urbanisation models levering on Green Infrastructure (GI) and nature-based solutions essential in supporting energy transition. Architects and planners are deemed to contribute with adaptive urban design levering on appropriate technologies mitigating climate change and anthropogenic impacts, especially in the Mediterranean countries. In the environmental technological design studios at the Faculty of Architecture of ‘Sapienza’ Università di Roma, students are asked to develop their project focusing on (GI) specialized design strategies and construction techniques in order to implement adaptive interventions aiming at energy conservation and improvements in energy efficiency, through resilient architecture and inclusive urban design. The key learning objectives of the courses are the provision of cultural and methodological references and of technical and operative tools to realize—in a coherent relationship with the built environment—bio-eco-oriented environmental technological design interventions at both architectural and urban scale. The main goal is to sensitise students to the urgent need of long-run equilibrium conditions among settlements, anthropogenic activities and Natural Capital, in a dynamic scenario of technological innovation and sustainability.