Title

Living in the age of complexity. Indoor air quality between technology, people and nature

DOI

doi.org/10.19229/978-88-5509-446-7/722022

Keywords

living, environment, sustainable architecture, indoor air quality, technology

Abstract

Over the last half-century, society has faced the scene of its future self-destruction and the unique condition of being aware of it, witnessing the alarms and warnings for our well-being and lifestyles. The anthropic landscape remains in a state of physical and environmental degradation, with settlements and communities experiencing social distress, pollution and inequality. Physical space, and its formal and social outcomes, are the product of human activity on the environment, adapted and manipulated to build settlements according to unsustainable lifestyles. Before the second industrialisation, human settlements were created by adapting human needs to the characteristics of the natural environment without compromising resources. Today, such ability to respectfully inhabit places is lost. The rate of technological innovation is weakened by consumerist logic, rather than strengthened in the direction of well-being and impact, and the construction industry is not immune to this trend. Health, safety and sustainability are the tracks that should guide development and innovation, both social and technological, the paper aims to rediscover and update these concepts within the construction process, to pursue a new balance between the built and natural environment.

Section

Architecture | Essays & Viewpoint

pp. 30-45

Author(s)

Alberto De Capua, Lidia Errante

Author(s) Biography

Alberto De Capua, Architect and PhD, is an Associate Professor at the Department of Architecture and Territory, ‘Mediterranea’ University of Reggio Calabria (Italy). He is a member of the Board of Directors of the University of Reggio Calabria and since 2020 is the Vice- Coordinator of the Course of Study in Design L4. He is the Scientific Director of the Innovation Centre for Sustainable Building Green Home for the University of Reggio Calabria. Mob. +39 339/624.25.69 | E-mail: adecapua@unirc.it

Lidia Errante,Architect and PhD, is a Research Fellow in Sustainable Building at the Department of Architecture and Territory of the ‘Mediterranea’ University of Reggio Calabria (Italy). She carries out research activities in the field of quality of urban life and socio-spatial studies aimed at the design of urban public space and the residential relevance of public housing districts. She works on sustainable redevelopment of the built environment using green technologies. Mob. +39 388/18.20.607 | E-mail: lidia.errante@unirc.it

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