Life Architecture. Open and sustainable building for a strategic dwelling system

The research proposes a new approach to the issue of residence; at the center of its focus lies the user within the complexity of his needs and his interaction with the environment, aiming at environmental and social sustainability. The research manifests itself through the identification of an open settlement/housing system which sets out in three different scales of intervention (urban, of the building, of the single dwelling). For each scale, the research defines functional, social and environmental rules, thereby becoming a tool capable of flexibly responding to the uses' variety and dynamism and to the context's characteristics, providing high functional and quality standards. The application of this methodology results not in immobile and closed buildings but in open and multi-shaped ones, which are constantly changing in time along with social and environmental variations, are able to conserve resources, use renewable energy sources, assess the entire life cycle of the employed products and promote sustainable social dynamics. The housing image originates from the totality of choices and transformations brought by each individual, even though contained inside some general rules. Thus, it is not a homogeneous, fixed and pre-configured solution but a complexity which reflects the complexity of the human actions and the environmental system of which humans are a part.