Shaping the future of built environment Research commitments to fill the gap between sustainability and recovery

On the threshold of the third millennium, built environments face the consequences of a deep technological obsolescence. While for the past, research enabled the development of systems and devices able to impact on economies, in times of crisis, new smart growth should be tied with the development of appropriate enabling technologies. Assuming spaces and buildings as an expression of human creativity, knowledge and innovation are expected to focus on converging technologies in order to rebalance dissipative processes (Glaeser, 2009). The recomposition of trends, challenges and commitments (Watson, 2008) could drive a smart growth in the western world. The paper discusses the role that architectural technology can play to contrast ancient settlements' vulnerability, promoting shifts towards innovation, involving not only means and tools, but knowledge, rules, processes. The principle of ensuring the conservation of resources, drives an experimental design approach aimed to foster the development of a vegetated closure system for the recovery of buildings' envelopes. Assumptions underlying the design and prototyping experience is that the construction sector, is sensitive to evolutionary innovations rather than radical ones.