AUGMENTED ARCHITECTURE AND MULTIFUNCTIONAL BUILDING EXOSKELETONS, A LOOK AT THE FUTURE OF EXISTING BUILDINGS IN URBAN AREAS

The scientific debate in construction is being focused by the increasing demand of reliable and effective intervention both on stand-alone buildings and entire urban neighbourhoods with the perspective of promoting their reuse and refurbishment. Furthermore, a sensitization towards the enhancement of Architectural Heritage has allowed the development of methodologies and international guidelines for the material compatibility of solutions to be applied in the building safety and urban enhancement as a whole. This new awareness of heritage applies both at the scale of the historical cities and of the landscape as recalled by “project actions” in the Mediterranean Europe - rehabilitation or new construction - whose principles of heritage enhancement refer to a territorial dimension. This is the general framework of the Urban Regeneration aimed at the optimization of environmental resources thanks to the containment of land consumption for new buildings. In such a context, the rehabilitation of structures by means of exoskeletons shows the peculiarity of affirming itself in the city fabric with formal and constructive autonomy, overlapping and sometimes opposing to the object to be rehabilitated. In the present contribution, a critical review of design references and literature is reported; it is aimed at identifying new opportunities in urban regeneration associated with such a class of interventions, starting from the architectural aspects up to technological ones. Finally, the exoskeleton-based intervention will be assessed in terms of material and environmental impact in the dialogue both with the structure and the intervention context through a swot analysis.