The Right to Housing

The study was the result of an agreement between the Region of Cal- abria, Mediterranea University and UNICAL, in order to define design strategies and new social housing policies according to the paradigm of sustainable develop- ment, in its environmental, economic and social aspects. As part of the P.A.R.C.O. Project (Observatory of Housing Policies Calabria Region), the assessment of the sustainability of buildings was tested by adopting, modifying it, the Protocol pro- posed by the Institute for Innovation and Transparency in Procurement and Envi- ronmental Compatibility (ITACA). The ITACA Protocol has been implemented on a regional scale and applied in regional procurements and private investments, allowing for sustainable homes and schools with reduced environmental impact. This research has led to reflections on the topic of living, addressed in the courses that the author holds in the Bachelor of Architecture and Bachelor of Design programs. The topic of Public Residential Housing is widely discussed in the socio-scientific debate on a national and international scale. The most critical issue concerns its state of preservation, which manifests severe degradation to such an extent that new generations see staying in these places as a personal fail- ure and escaping as a success. The text aims to open a reflection on living today by addressing one of the most pressing issues affecting the modern Italian con- temporary city: the enormous building stock made up of neighborhoods of “social housing” from the last thirty years of the last century. Houses, public and con- ventioned constituting a significant part of our cities often imitated in ways and forms by private interventions not belonging directly to the publicly owned hous- ing stock. A current and not special housing, designed and built according to the construction practice proper to the modern twentieth century: reinforced concrete cage systems, saving of economic resources used, from a functional optimization of space, according to a conception of public housing, today critical and obsolete. The subject of the modern collective house is one of the main building resources from which to start to take care of our cities and above all to reaffirm the concept of living that has often been much neglected in recent years. A necessary action, no longer procrastinable, to define diagnoses and cures to operate on this sick building through the knowledge and analysis of operational design strategies