Strategies for public housing estate refurbishment

With the aim to satisfy the changing housing demand and to improve the quality of the housing estates, the Italian housing policy for the next years is working on programmes for the refurbishment of the existing housing stock. The main problem for the development of this strategy is the assessment of size and condition of the large public housing estates. On the other hand, the assessment procedures should give the information required to establish the feasibleness of refurbishment works considering the interdependencies between technological, commercial, environmental and social aspects. The paper presents a research project funded by the Ministry of Scientific Research and carried out by the University of Ferrara (Department of Architecture) and the University of Milano (Polytechnic). The research has been aimed to define procedures and parameters to be used for estimating the housing estates condition considering the technical degradation of building components and the loss of the functional performances related to the user needs. The main tasks developed into the research project and described in this paper concern: - methodological approaches to the condition assessment of buildings and building components; - technical criteria for evaluating the general condition of the housing estates; - development of procedures and tools - such as user and design guidelines, check-lists, technical instructions - for architects, owners and tenants.