Urban morphology and energy performance in the 20th century public city: the case of Rome

A vivacious discussion focusing on the 20th century public housing neighbourhoods’ urban regeneration and densification amongst academics and practitioners working in architecture and urban design is ongoing. Two main focuses of analysis have been investigated: the different transformation strategies and the relationship between urban morphology and energy performance in the existing urban fabric. At present, these focuses need to be developed into an integrated approach determining tools and design methods at urban scale. Our study presents a contribution to the energy analysis and related design tools at urban scale permitting to determine more efficient conditions for the 20th century public housing neighbourhoods. It has been carried out within the public building stock of Rome which globally represents the 12% of the urban footprint: an ideal environment to test urban scale design methods for urban regeneration in Mediterranean climate. The relation between morphology and energy demand has been investigated taken into account different spatial density definitions as useful indicators to illustrate this kind of relation. Among these indicators, those more suitable to express reliable trends in relation to energy demand have been determined. The analyses have been conducted with Design Builder and Energy Plus simulation tool. This paper present and discuss results for three case studies. Building intensity (FSI) and coverage (GSI) show that density has relevance on energy demand for heating and cooling. Especially at islands scale, these indicators seem to be more adequate to describe this relation. The investigation on these kinds of performances achieved by density indicators help comprehend the different behaviours in each urban fabric. Methodological structure and the determined parametrical tools show themselves as knowledge base for aware design transformations of this housing building stock.