125 CASES OF NEW SOCIAL DESIGN HOUSES COMPARED.

In early 2011, Assimpredil ANCE (Association of construction firms and related industries in the provinces of Milan, Lodi, Monza and Brianza), together with the Muicipality of Milan, the Milano Chamber of Architects, IN/ARCH Lombardia and FederlegnoArredo, organized a competition to form a directory for high-performance, low-cost housing buildings proposals. Aim of the competition was to promote architectural quality, research and innovation in the housing sector by offering practical examples of high-performance, low-cost housing designs that fulfill the specific requirements. Participants were invited to submit designs on two themes: a 12 floors tower building and a 5 floors horizontal building, both intended with a GFA of about 5,000 sqm. The proposal were asked to deal with: • Prefabricated and/or traditional construction system with high performance standards. • Attention to the building's life cycle and its operating and management costs from the perspective of environmental sensitivity. • Control and containment of costs and construction times with the contractor guaranteeing completion. • Optimal usability and design flexibility. • Optimization of energy efficiency and acoustic performance, low CO2 emissions, minimization of indoor and outdoor pollution. • Milanese architectural identity given a contemporary sensibility. • Aggregability and flexibility of the apartments' building solutions. • Use of innovative components. After the selection made by the technical jury, 125 projects were admitted to the directory. A book has been published containing all projects told through images, technical drawings and a dashboard that summarizes, for each project, the technical performance and the assessment made by the qualitative jury. Editing the book, we had the opportunity to analyse in detail all projects, their structural characteristics, their performance and their architectural features. This paper aims to relate the results of this analysis, reporting, through a series of comparative studies, the state of the art of the Italian residential construction sector, its strengths and its weaknesses, the typological design strategies put in place and the available technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]