Experimenting circularity and material resource efficiency in environmental design to foster sustainable urban regeneration

This paper reports the results of research and educational practices conducted over six years (2018-2024) in Environmental Design Studios within a master’s degree in Architecture - Urban Regeneration. The research approach focuses on Life Cycle Design and process/product innovation for circularity. Circular design is not yet central to “Sapienza” School of Architecture’s teaching, where approaches related to bioclimatic, to cut operational energy/ emissions, and ecological aspects, for sustainability and resilience, are more consolidated. After teaching Life Cycle Design to Product Design students, thanks to a strong integration between research, experimentation and teaching, innovative educational practices were conceived and implemented, to maximize the impact of the developed research methodology. Through an original theoretical-practical approach, students develop skills in designing, measuring and evaluating, for circularity applied to different integrated resource flows, starting from materials. The research involved redesigning existing buildings of different typologies to improve their overall eco-effectiveness, adopting Cradle to Cradle principles.