Verso la resilienza e l’adattamento al cambiamento climatico: metodi e strumenti nelle diverse fasi e scale dell’architettura Towards Resilience and Climate Adaptation: Methods and tools for the different scales and phases of building design and urban planning

According to the latest reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the extreme events due to climate change are increasing in frequency and intensity. The effects of climate change have challenging impacts on the built environment, such as urban heat island (UHI) and flooding risk, and they are expected to worsen due to the increasing urbanization. To cope with these threats, the construction sector, which is responsible for nearly 40% of the global emissions, must accelerate towards more sustainable development, reducing energy consumption, emissions and waste. Moreover, both buildings and open urban spaces must improve their capacity for resilience in the face of the expected impacts of climate change. There are many methods and strategies to address climate change mitigation and adaptation in the built environment, and some of them can be applied from the design phases of the architectural process, while some others can be exploited also a posteriori. The following paper provides an overview of the methods and strategies for achieving the goals of sustainable and resilient built environments in the different scales and phases of the design process. Through a review of the relevant scientific literature on the topic, the paper discusses the following climate mitigation and adaptation strategies: design approaches to improve the urban ventilation and air quality, nature-based solutions, sustainable urban drainage solutions, sustainable building materials, innovative optimization designs methods, technologies to adapt the building to the flooring risk, materials from recycling the urban waste, green walls, and roofs. Finally, limits and barriers are discussed too, and some suggestions are provided for further implementation of climate adaptation and mitigation strategies in everyday design practice.