*Article* **Historical School Buildings. A Multi-Criteria Approach for Urban Sustainable Projects**

**Maria Rosaria Guarini 1,\*, Pierluigi Morano <sup>2</sup> and Francesco Sica <sup>3</sup>**


Received: 20 December 2019; Accepted: 29 January 2020; Published: 3 February 2020

**Abstract:** It is recognized, in Europe and elsewhere, that there is a need to implement sustainable urban intervention policies based also on the recovery of existing public real estate assets. In Italy, the schools are a significant part of public property. At this time (2019), many buildings destined for teaching need to be redeveloped, both from a structural and plant engineering point of view, and with regard to the management of the spaces available for teaching and social activities. Although, there have been many attempts by the legislator to regulate the modus operandi in the school construction field, it is clear that there is a lack of a unique regulatory system in which the technical and functional-managerial aspects relating to the same school are considered together. On this basis, with this study a multi-criteria evaluation protocol to support intervention planning for the redevelopment of existing school buildings is proposed. The study defines an evaluation framework with which we can establish the design priorities to be carried out in accordance with the building features and community needs. The evaluation framework is tested on a renewal project regarding a school building located in the historic center of Rome (Italy).

**Keywords:** urban sustainable development; historical school buildings; multi-criteria evaluation

### **1. Introduction**

The urban policies of many countries, both European and not, are characterized by sustainable intervention practices [1,2]. Among these, some concern specifically the preservation of ecosystems, while others concern the conservation of territorial infrastructure and existing buildings [3–7]. Since 2007, with the Leipzig Charter [8], the European Union Member States promoted development policies based on integrated planning actions, mainly for the regeneration and upgrading of both buildings and urban areas [9,10]. There are many European strategies and plans in which the aspects linked to the physical regeneration of territory and those regarding its economic, social and environmental system are considered jointly [11,12].

In Italy, the Legislative Decree 102/2014 [13], which implements the European Directive 2012/27/EU, outlines a strategic reference framework specifically aimed at promoting urban renewal projects on public real estate assets in order to improve their energy efficiency [14–17]. This also with the use of renewable resources present in nature, building systems and technological solutions capable of producing a low environmental impact [18–22].

With regard to the Italian context, the set of public buildings consists of 1,056,404 units divided into 11 homogeneous clusters [23]. The clusters with more than 10,000 buildings include offices (48,376 units), homes (594,337), sheds and warehouses (66,657), garages and car-parks (184,532), shops (28,794), barracks (13,931), schools (46,429), hospitals (11,731), and sports facilities (15,725) [24].

Along with dwellings and car-parks clusters, school buildings are one of the largest clusters. According to data in *Anagrafe dell'Edilizia Scolastica* (AES), made available (26 September 2018) through the portal of the Education, University and Research Ministry [25], in Italy there is a school building stock of 40,151 buildings in use, and 22,000 of these were built before 1970. A little more than half of the stock buildings are equipped with measures to reduce energy consumption (57.5%) and have a static test certificate (53.2%). The 22.3% of buildings without this certificate were built before 1970. A total of 59.5% do not have a fire prevention certificate, and 53.8% lack a habitability certificate. The situation regarding the emergency plan, present in 78.6% of schools, and architectural barriers, removed in 74.5% of buildings, is better. On the basis of these data, the Italian school heritage is mainly composed of buildings built before 1975, not only with technological criteria typical of their construction time, but also conforming to educational needs different from the current ones. Only those built after 1975 are characterized by the typological specialization enshrined in the currently legislation that takes into account the new international educational-didactic guidelines. With reference to international guidelines, the school is no longer conceived only as a space for students and school staff offering services closely related to education, but also as a place to carry out activities in order to make the urban context in which the school is located more livable [26,27]. By providing the community with structures, spaces, and services, the school can be an aggregating territorial polarity (civic center), and it can improve the quality of life in the community [28–30].

Over time, there have been multiple attempts to direct the modus operandi of intervention on Italian school buildings with specific measures. Among these, those issued from 1960 onwards, and some currently in force are:


Significant among the guidelines that directly affect the construction and redevelopment of school buildings are those relating to the:

• internal architecture of schools, by the Education, University and Research Ministry after hearing the Unified Conference (MD 11 April 2013), bearing the technical standards-framework, containing the minimum and maximum indices of urban functionality, construction, also with reference to technologies in the field of efficiency and energy saving and production from renewable energy sources, and teaching, to ensure appropriate and homogeneous reference design guidelines on the national territory [38];


Each of the legislative acts take into account one of the many aspects to be considered with reference to the life cycle of the school building. This is in relation to mono-dimensional logics that consider in a disjointed manner the design and construction components of the transformation or redevelopment project preferring a solving approach to that of integrated problem based-solving type [44–46].

The many investment programs aimed at upgrading the existing school heritage and new schools, promoted at the national and/or regional level since the second half of the last century, have followed a solving approach logic. The allocations for interventions on the school building stock have been directed to finance interventions on the school buildings for their construction, renovation, safety, anti-seismic adaptation, energy efficiency and innovation [47]. However, from 2015, according to Art. 10 of Legislative Decree n◦ 104/2013 (now Law n◦ 128/2013), the three-year national planning of school building interventions was introduced. The substantial funding allocated to school building in recent years has preferred a modus operandi to solve specific problems, not often taking into account the mutual relations that there may be between multiple technical and regulatory aspects of a transformation/redevelopment intervention.

On the basis of such a complex and articulated technical-regulatory framework, due to the multiple aspects and mutual relations that characterize the reference system to be taken into account in the field of school building, the execution of actions on the same school building in different times in a non-integrated way may involve intervening in the same building in a way not perfectly congruent functionally and aesthetically with the need to interrupt or move educational activities with a consequent increase in the costs [48,49].

So, in the present work a multi-criteria evaluation protocol for the definition of integrated action strategies regarding new school buildings or existing ones is proposed. With reference to the part of the school building already in use, the implementation of the proposed methodology is aimed at identifying, on the one hand, the need and degree of a functional and structural adaptation of the school, and on the other, the re-modelling of the internal spaces and external ones to be used by the community. This takes into account both the technical and structural features of the building, and the socio-economic characteristics of the urban context. Using the proposed evaluation methodology, the types of intervention to be adopted in order to ensure the building conforms to the regulations in force and to satisfy the people's needs are defined. The validity and flexibility of the proposed method are tested by implementing the evaluation approach in the case of a redevelopment project concerning the school building located in the historic centre of Rome (Italy).

In the following sections, Section 2 describes the type of technical-regulatory material for the execution of initiatives on school buildings with particular reference to Italian case, Section 3 defines the phases of the multi-criteria methodology, and Section 4 illustrates the case study. Finally, conclusions are reached, and the potential for application of the proposed instrument and future research prospects are defined.
