Umberto Mecca

Polytechnic University of Turin | polito · DISEG - Department of Structural Engineering, Construction and Soil Mechanics

The development of sustainable cities involves improving the performance of the built environment and its effects on its context as one of the multiple intervention points. Indeed, outlining and implementing building artefacts does not constitute a simple act of generating a physical place, but represents a process that cannot ignore the positive a...

This paper introduces actual considerations for the progressive disuse of residential space in the Alpine territory, considering possible actions. Nowadays, the building complexes built around the 1960s and 1970s (a symbol of mass tourism) are suffering and searching for a new identity. The generation of owners who bought them has aged and the prop...

This paper introduces actual considerations on the progressive disuse of residential space in the Alpine territory, considering possible actions. Nowadays, the building complexes built around the 60s and 70s (symbol of the mass tourism) fell to be suffering and searching of a new identity: the generation of owners, who bought them, has aged and the...

BIM and the construction sector have long been an inseparable pair: in many European Countries it is a consolidated practice while in others there is a big debate about it but. Although there are important signs of a turning point, it still does not seem to be really feasible. In Italy, the leverage for transformation is certainly the public works...

Starting from the strategic initiative presented in 2020 by the European Commission and entitled “A wave of renovations for Europe: greening buildings, creating jobs and improving lives”, Member States are now committed to stepping up efforts to renovate their building stock, with the precise goal of achieving climate neutrality in 2050. With the a...

In Italy, a frequent approach to building maintenance is—for evident cost reasons—to operate following an occurred fault; from this point of view, the opportunity to design a database containing structured information on building's state of conservation is still a long way off. The paper focuses on an application to a real case study and leads to a...

The global climate emergency has among its main causes the emission of large quantities of CO2 due to human activities. There are many policies implemented so far worldwide, but as the Union Square climate clock in the heart of Manhattan highlights, a greater effort is needed. The work of Gan Golan and Andrew Boyd shows, with its countdown, how muc...

By now, it is clear the built environment could play an important role in fighting climate change, since it accounts for around 39% of global energy-related carbon emissions. Generally speaking, Italian residential stock is over 50 years old and around 16% of that needs large interventions due to its poor maintenance condition. So, the maintenance...

The Italian way of thinking about maintenance is too often one-sided. Indeed, it is considered not so much as a useful practice to prevent the occurrence of a fault (ex ante), but as an intervention to solve it (ex post). Analyzing the legislation relating to the construction sector, it can be seen that it does not clearly define the responsibiliti...

The decentralization of the production sector crisis following industries in the suburbs have generated a multitude of empty containers in the medium-large Italian cities, which are abandoned, unsafe, and often dangerous for the community. From this arises the need to recover them and transform them into something else. This is not always possible...