Indeterminate and flexible architectures. 'La Casa' che fa città. Scale di riqualificazione: quartiere, edificio e alloggio

One of the main problems affecting the housing in the last de- cades has been the disposal and renovation of these inherited buildings, as well as the risk of becoming technically or functionally obsolete in the short term because the performance of the buildings no longer has a competitive edge in the housing market nor do they satisfy the needs of the user. This inability to manage the uncertainties of the socio-economic context and the various needs that arise from different types of housing usage tends to render the housing system inadequate or obsolete and reduce its shelf life. If flexibility is the ability of a system to be easily modified and to respond to changes in the environment in a timely and convenient, then the flexibility can be considered the antidote to obsolescence, or the characteristic of the system that guarantees slippage over time. Flexibility reduces the exposure of project uncertainty, provides useful solutions to mitigate risks related to changes and market constraints, and the risks associated with technological obsolescence; is so, that property that makes the system resilient, that is, able to “absorb the shock and/or disturbance without undergoing major alterations in its functional organization, in its structure and in its identity features”(UNEP,2005). The paper identifies two principal design strategies that weigh uncertainty in its two fundamental design moments, that is, as conception and service life: strategies for “indeterminate architectures” and “flexible Architectures”.