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Earthquakes represent one of the most disastrous natural phenomena for adverse social and urban impacts. The consequent need to recover buildings from a catastrophic event may represent an opportunity for their structural and energy retrofit, particularly for listed structures or those representing architectural heritage. However, the various aspects of energy optimisation, seismic protection and cultural heritage preservation of the building stock may be in conflict. For this reason, a multidisciplinary design approach is needed to consider all the aspects involved in the retrofit process. This chapter discusses the development and application of an Operative Design Tool (ODT). This is a tool based on a multidisciplinary approach and sustainability principle guidelines with standards for seismic and energy retrofitting. The applicability of the proposed approach is examined through the analysis of the former San Salvatore Hospital of L’Aquila, a complex city district of buildings of different eras, severely damaged by the 2009 earthquake. The development of ODT identifies energy improvement best practices that simultaneously allow renovations to address the issues of seismic damage, protection and valorisation of historic buildings. Such guidelines for integrating the design of seismic improvement and energy optimisation in historical buildings can help policy makers and designers during renovation processes.

This chapter addresses the relationship between community’s ability to develop mechanisms for collective responses to a catastrophe and the pre-existing settlement model, using as a reference the case study of the historic centre of Talca, destroyed by the earthquake that hit south-central Chile in 2010. Before the earthquake, the historic centre of Talca was the core of the city and was characterised by a certain heterogeneity of artefacts, inhabitants and activities. All around the centre, a series of satellite neighbourhoods began to appear from the 1980s, mainly erected by private enterprise without a clear public design, characterised by strong mono-functionality, clear distinctions by income levels, large commercial buildings and large road infrastructures. Reconstruction after the earthquake has encouraged the development of these new districts, while the centre is being rebuilt in an uneven way, partly to replace destroyed areas and partly by densification interventions. Although the historical nucleus is no longer clearly recognisable today, the liveliness of the centre’s public life has succeeded in resisting, for a while, through the mobilisation of the inhabitants in defence of some symbolic buildings. Of particular interest is the process of citizen mobilisation around the value of a state and comprehensive schools (Escuelas Concentradas) that led the school buildings to keep the same function and form it had before the earthquake. The results of the study highlight the connection between the settlement pattern and the inherent relationship among the inhabitants towards it; how a process of collective awareness post-catastrophe is closely linked to the pre-disaster scenario, as amply emphasised in the literature; and how the complexity of daily practices and relationships that develop in the historic city are, at the same time, a tool of mitigating social risk.