When Houseful goes on the book “Architectures for EU Next Generation Cities – Challenges, Key Drivers and Research Trends”

Project's updates - 22 Dec 2022

A new book explores future design actions to address the challenges, factors, and trends influencing the liveability of tomorrow's cities.

As a result of climate change, cities are experiencing increasingly complex challenges that heavily impact people’s living conditions, health, and well-being. It is only in recent times that an increase of social awareness about the correlation between the increase in anthropic-generated emissions and the rise in global temperatures has been recorded, primarily resulting from evidence-based demonstrations by the scientific community.

The book “Architectures for EU Next Generation Cities – Challenges, Key Drivers and Research Trends”, published by Franco Angeli Editore ( one of the most important Italian publishing houses), attempts to provide an overview of the primary factors influencing the evolution of European urban environments and their needs, while keeping an eye on the possible fallout on local policies – both within the EU and beyond – as well as global trends.

Four priority topics are discussed: city resilience, the energy demand of cities and buildings, future needs, and the potential for applying circular models.

As Jacopo Gaspari -Associate professor at the Department of Architecture of the University of Bologna and coauthor of the book –  said, “This book is not a final destination but rather a starting point for future design actions to address the challenges, factors, and trends influencing the livability of tomorrow’s cities“.

An entire section of this book, titled “Factors influencing the social perceptions and choices towards circular renovation in the housing sector”, is dedicated to the Houseful project.

In this chapter, the Houseful partners alchemia-nova, WE&B, Neues Leben, and Agencia de l’Habitatge de Catalunya offer a multidisciplinary field of investigation, dealing with social and behavioral aspects related to energy use and circular solution in the residential sector, with specific reference to Houseful project.

The book is available in open access: https://series.francoangeli.it/index.php/oa/catalog/view/892/735/5208.

The Houseful Consortium wants to thank prof. Jacopo Gaspari  for this opportunity. Special thanks also to Licia Felicioni, for the valuable dialogue made in these last months in the preparation of this book.