Adaptive Resiliency, a designer’s guidelines for future building scenarios

It has become a recent phenomenon to regard buildings as resilient, a term typically used for people yet with ever-changing climatic impacts, our buildings, much like our bodies and surrounding nature, must find ways to adapt and resist climatic stress. The larger picture of climate change and objectives set out by the European Union to reduce emissions, push all sectors to become resilient to achieve this goal. Buildings, existing and new, play a significant role in overall emissions due to the stress and energy demand required to extract, produce, transport, and install building materials, and eventually, discard or hopefully, recycle materials. The task then is to know how this can be achieved and verified. Long standing and internationally recognized environmental protocols such as BREEAM and LEED have been setting the standards for measurable environmental standards since 1990. To provide a local and European standard, Italy’s CAM (minimal environmental criteria) will also be explored. These three will be the backdrop for a study to pinpoint the necessary tools for addressing this design task and environmental challenge. Subsequently, applying these tools to a case study building will further the investigation to discover which tools are more effective, verifiable, and measurable. The case study settles on an existing building in the centre of Bologna, one that has already been subject to renovations, and thus offers the potential to highlight the integrated value that existing buildings have and highlights the inherent value and eventual cost savings and emission reductions in renovations compare to new construction.