*4.1. Knowledge Phase*

4.1.1. Description of the School from the Historical, Technical and Architectural Point of View, According to Its Own Training Plan and the Extra-Educational Services Offered to the Community

The school building is located inside the first Town Hall in the historic center of the city of Rome, specifically in the Ludovisi district. The building is strategically located with respect to both the main roads through which you can reach the city-center, and the train station of Roma Termini, as demonstrated by calculating the travel time between the school and the points of greatest infrastructural interest through Google Map.

With specific regard to the *Torquato Tasso* classical high school, the institute, founded in 1908, was proposed from the beginning as a school serving the Ludovisi district and neighboring ones. Over the years, a series of enlargements, transformations and building maintenance interventions were carried out, especially on the structure, such as the original internal and external conformation of the building is partially modified.

The school rooms are distributed over two floors as well as on the ground floor, where most of the administrative offices are located. As described in the Self-assessment Report (2019) of the institute, there are 44 classrooms for frontal teaching, three spaces for laboratories, a great hall, a Library and a Natural Sciences Museum, administrative offices and restrooms on each floor. Figure 9 shows a plan of a typical school floor plan from 1964. The plan in the figure was acquired from the school's administrative offices after an on-site inspection.

To date (2019), the school has 919 students enrolled in the first academic year (a.y.). Table 4 shows the number of students enrolled in the first year, the number of classes and sections from the academic year 2015–2016 to the academic year 2019–2020.

**Figure 9.** Typical floor plan of *Torquato Tasso* classical high school (1964).


*Source*: Data obtained at the school administration offices and acquired during on-site inspections.

On the basis of the data in Table 4, a progressive increase in the student population is evident. In particular, the trend towards an increase in the number of students enrolled in the first year at each academic year has produced, over time, the gradual fragmentation of classrooms in environments characterized by different sizes. On-site inspections of three different types of large, middle and small size classrooms are revealed in Table 5, which shows the dimensions (both linear and superficial) of the three types of classroom together with those of the other rooms serving the school.

—Survey of the superficial consistencies of the internal and external spaces of the school

In order to verify the per capita surface endowment of each space inside and outside the school building, a preliminary phase of a consistency survey of the building was carried out. Table 5 shows the geometric measurements of the rooms located on a typical floor (the first and second floors on which teaching activities have the same planimetric and distributive-spatial composition). Table 6, instead, shows the data of the surfaces of the internal and external spaces in an aggregate manner.




**Table 5.** *Cont.*

**Table 6.** Surface consistencies of the school's internal and external aggregated spaces.


4.1.2. Socio-Economic Analysis of the Urban Context in which the School Is Located

The Ludovisi district is characterized by the significant presence of elements with a strong historical-artistic and architectural value. Not far from the school, in fact, there are the Museum Boncompagni-Ludovisi, the National Gallery of Ancient Art of Barberini Building and the Borghese Gallery. The historical connotation of the territory contributes to define a context of strong cultural value through which the school encourage the education and training of students. The building's position in relation to some research institutes (for example, the National Research Centre) and university buildings (Sapienza University) has also made it possible to establish collaborative relationships by developing a number of joint educational initiatives in order to support the educational growth of students and also encourage the local development of the territory.

In order to analyze and characterize the territorial context of reference in which the school is placed also with regard to the types of existing services, the territorial area of analysis was included within a buffer with a radius of influence of 1000 m from the point where the school is located (Circular N◦ 425/1967). With the aim of identifying the prevailing services within the scope of the survey thus defined, a phase of georeferencing of the commercial, receptive, cultural and sports services was conducted.

After the georeferencing of the information, an information map (see Figure 10) was created using GIS instrumentation (Google Maps) to support the identification and analysis of services within the 1000 m buffer. Through the use of this cartography, it was possible to see that the territory is characterized by the high density of commercial activities and accommodation facilities. This is due to the presence of elements with strong tourist and infrastructural attractiveness (Roma Termini railway station) that influence the market dynamics. In the analysis buffer of 1000 meters, there are no services for the community (for example, non-exhaustive, neighborhood library, headquarters for cultural associations, spaces for social gathering).

**Figure 10.** Map for market analysis of the study area made with GIS.

### *4.2. Evaluation Phase*

4.2.1. Congruence Check between the Technical and Regulatory Requirements and the Actual State of the School

After the cognitive phase aimed at defining the state of the school, the congruence of the surface consistencies of the rooms surveyed (see Table 6) was verified, taking into account the regulatory requirements relating to their sizing in relation to the number of student that they host. This was done by comparing the value of the per capita equipment of each space (If), obtained by comparing the areas surveyed on site to the capacity of each space expressed in terms of number of students, with the corresponding regulatory standards (If\*) contained in the Ministerial Decree of April 18 in 1975. For each type of space, the value of Li\_fi was defined according to the corresponding percentage ΔIfi. Table 7 shows the surface consistencies of each type of internal and external space used by the school, the theoretical surface indices, and those deriving from on-site measurements, the corresponding ΔIfi and Li\_f. The score at Li\_f is assigned with the diagram in Figure 2. The final Lf parameter to be considered was obtained from the arithmetic mean of the Li\_f of each type of space. In this case, the average value of Lf was 2.3.


From a structural, plant engineering, environmental, health and hygiene points of view, on the other hand, a qualitative evaluation of the school's degree of conformity with the content expressed in the reference standards was carried out.

In order to estimate the level of compliance of the school with the laws on fire prevention, safety of the structure, indoor quality, the presence of fire-fighting devices in each room inside the school was verified, as well as the possible inability of some spaces at the time of on-site inspection, as well as the formation of condensation on the walls inside the building.

With regard to the type of actions implemented within the school in order to reduce the fire risk, at the date of the inspection in March 2019, the fire-fighting system serving the building had recently been brought into conformity with the technical regulations of reference. By carrying out a series of on-site inspections, it was possible to ascertain that each room was equipped with a special fire-fighting device.

With regard, however, to the safety of the school for the prevention of seismic risk, following a campaign of on-site inspections it was possible to find that some of its internal environments were not accessible (in particular two rooms on the first floor). The necessary interventions for their safety were being carried out in order to use them to carry out frontal and laboratory didactic activities.

Finally, again through visits to the school, it was possible to verify the presence of superficial condensation in the spaces of each floor. At the time of the inspection, some classrooms had spots of surface condensation on the internal perimeter walls (five on the first floor and two on the second).

On the basis of the ordinal scale of values used to assign a score to the parameter Li concerning the level of compliance with the content of the technical-normative system in force, the relative verification of compliance of the state with the fire regulations was measured by assigning a score of 5. Instead, the level of congruence between the actual configuration of school building and the reference standard for the structural safety of the spaces was evaluated by assigning the corresponding parameter Ls the score of 4. From the sum of La, Ls, Li-s and Lf was obtained the Kt, which was equal to 15.3.

With reference, however, to the estimate of the level of correspondence between the services currently present in the school and those found in the context of reference, the Lser is defined for each type of service that you can see inside the building to be upgraded.

The services that are present in some rooms inside the school include a library, a space aggregative (aula magna), a museum of natural sciences, and an art laboratory. From the context analysis previously illustrated in Section 4.1.2, there are no similar services within the 1000 m analysis from the point where the school in question is located. Therefore, each Li\_ser is given a score of 6. The corresponding Kser, deriving from the aggregation of Li\_ser, is equal to 24.

4.2.2. Identification of Types of Interventions to Be Implemented in Case of Non-Compliance with the Minimum Regulatory Requirements Regarding Safety and Use of School Space

After the phase of evaluation of the level of correspondence between the actual state of the school building and reference regulations, on the basis of the values obtained by Kser and Ki\_t, the methods of intervention to be followed for the planning and/or design of interventions aimed at the functional and structural-plant requalification of the school were identified.

The phase of identification of the intervention modalities was carried out using the double entry diagram of Figure 7. Reporting on the x-axis the value of Kt and on y-axis Kser is defined the combination of the types of action to be implemented for the integrated requalification of the school. In this case, four types of service were considered (n◦ Si = 4) and four regulatory criteria were respected (n◦Ci = 4). So, the extremes of the numerical intervals that identify the proposed types of intervention (TC, RC, DC) were multiplied respectively by the total number of services and technical-regulatory criteria considered.

Figure 11 shows the analysis scheme of Figure 7 for the part of the school building related to the *Torquato Tasso* classical high school.

In the light of the diagram in Figure 10, specifically concerning the school being studied, on the basis of the Kser and Kt values obtained from the evaluation procedure described in Section 3.2.1, it is possible to observe that it would be appropriate to encourage interventions aimed, in particular, at making better use of the spaces dedicated to teaching and sports activities (*Distributional Challenges*), as well as actions for the safety of environments useful for carrying out training activities for students (*Regulatory Compliance*). From the analysis carried out on the types of service existing and falling within the territorial buffer of 1000 m (see Section 4.1.2), the need to enhance some environments inside and/or outside the institution to open up the cultural and social services to the community emerges. These include, for example, the opening to the public of the library inside the building, or even the use of some spaces (classrooms and/or corridors) for the exhibition of art and sculpture objects made by students in art education courses included in the educational training plan.

**Figure 11.** Double entry diagram for the definition of the intervention modalities to be implemented for the integrated requalification of *Torquato Tasso* classical high school.

### **5. Conclusions**

In the context of the settlement transformation processes aimed at the redevelopment, recovery and enhancement of the existing building, the need to take into account, from the planning phase, multiple aspects of various kinds in an integrated manner considering the existing mutual relations among them is recognized. The complexity of jointly considering multiple characteristics of the same project, both technical and spatial-functional types, has encouraged the use of intervention practices often based on a problem-solving-based approaches and not on multidimensional ones.

This can be observed especially in the field of Italian school buildings (2019), where there is a lack of a single legislative framework in which to jointly include technical and functional evaluations with those that specifically concern the services that characterize the market of the urban context.

For supporting the planning, design and execution of interventions by preferring an integrated approach, especially with regard to the redevelopment of existing school buildings, the proposed methodology attempts to include within a single multi-criteria evaluation logic aspects of various kinds: structural, plant engineering, sanitation, spatial-functional, strengthening of existing services and integration of others on the basis of the market characterizing the city within the buffer of 1000 meters from the school is located. Appropriate criteria and qualitative measurement systems are used for each one.

The application of the evaluation methodology to the case of redevelopment of the school located in the historic center of the city of Rome (Italy) attests to the practicality of the proposed evaluation framework.

The in-depth analysis and study on a careful choice of the criterion with which to express the level of adaptation of the technical-structural features and the planimetric distribution of the schools places to the regulatory requirements and the possibility to express the use of spaces for additional services for the community outline future research prospects. Specifically, it would be interesting to implement participatory procedures for the identification of needs by the student community, for example through the administration of questionnaires, or even to return the proposed methodology in the form of mathematical expressions as the basis of the implementation of optimization linear systems of the operational research.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, M.R.G., P.M. and F.S.; Data curation, F.S.; Formal analysis, M.R.G., P.M. and F.S.; Investigation, M.R.G. and F.S.; Methodology, M.R.G., P.M. and F.S.; Resources, M.R.G. and F.S.; Supervision, M.R.G. and P.M.; Validation, M.R.G. and P.M.; Visualization, M.R.G., P.M. and F.S.; Writing—original draft, M.R.G., P.M. and F.S.; Writing—review & editing, M.R.G., P.M. and F.S. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
