Microgenerazione distribuita:integrazione morfologica e tecnologica

You only have to take a look around to realize how slow is the process through which the building trade meets the transformation of human demands. Maybe because of its close relation with primary and unchanged needs, such as resting, feeding, and in general carrying on life’s basic activities into a controlled environment. But despite this all, or probably because of it, our houses don’t seem so far from our ancestors’ dwellings. And still our lifestyle is extremely different from theirs, as well as diverse are the services available for our personal comfort. Many of the several elements characterising contemporary age (heating systems, plumbing, building materials, etc.) have been introduced somehow secretly, have been hidden, or have been camouflaged with ancient or traditional shapes. Maybe the new distributed microgeneration systems – small-scaled power plants to be placed on the territory nearby the consuming structures - will be the next intruders? On the one hand this approach to the energetic problem certainly seems to be promising because of its implied reduction of the use of non-renewable sources. But on the other hand, doesn’t it take the risk of clashing – with paralysing consequences - with the issues of landscape preservation? Or with the many troubles descending by the attempts of integration between new materials and “languages” and our well-established building traditions? Or simply with the dullness of certain urban planning law systems? This Doctorate thesis (in progress) deals with the issue of distributed microgeneration trying to point out its actual potential of application and diffusion, explaining both its weak points and the possible ways of relating with the existing built environment. The main questions this work is trying to answer, and according to which the future possible scenarios will develop, are the following: What is implied by the shifting from an energy distribution system organised in big poles, with the built environment as a terminal, to a system composed of a network of minor poles, each one consumer and producer at the same time? How will the technologies’ choice be determined? How wide will be the influence on urban fabric and building typologies? How will the most evident elements be integrated, and what can be meant by “integration”? Will the urban-scape change? Will these systems be able to nourish the architectural language of post-oil era? This article faces some of these questions, which - together with many others – will be developed within next year’s research work.