Beyond Fast. Refurbishment Strategies to Respond to Socio-economic Burdens in Social Housing: the Case Study of Corso Taranto, Torino

IPCC has announced that temperatures have already passed the critical state with climate change. Every new opening in the oil and gas field has an impact, and we have already passed the limit given by the Paris Agreement. Fuel usage increases as the fuel needs to counter the effects, eventually changing the climate and creating an inevitable cycle of cause and effect. Thus, energy consumption is increasing while the energy costs rapidly rise in contrast to the planned reserve openings. The families' income cannot keep up with the pace of energy prices. Energy bills are rising, as well as consumption, while families spend more than 10% of their incomes on energy bills, accounting for energy poverty. The residential sector creates more than half of the CO2 production while the prices increase, and residents must choose their needs to keep up with the prices. Inadequacy in reaching energy prices highly affects low-income groups, especially those residing in social housing blocks, wherein for each new resident, residualisation decreases income and purchasing power. The construction of social housing block stock for lower income groups was rising, especially in Europe after WW2, with the economic boom requiring work power. In the case of Italy, the effect of the boom was that many factories, specifically in Turin, the FIAT factories, emerged, and to respond to the housing needs, new neighborhoods were born. These failed to respond to the needs of the people, where they demanded different social and economic needs, which currently need to be improved to cope with energy poverty. In light of the criticality of energy poverty in today's situation, the thesis focuses on explicitly co-housing units owned by a public body, such as a local government or a housing authority. The reason is to have holistic design options and to satisfy multifamily needs with different needs and occupancy ratios while establishing multiscale regeneration strategies to respond to the least lower-income people. The research explores Turin's public housing neighborhoods, specifically focusing on a case study of Corso Taranto. This examination aims to assess the viability of various methods and actions in this context, drawing comparisons with similar case studies. Initially, the study defines the existing problems through a thorough literature review and historical analysis of the case study. Then, the research looked for examples of transformations with various goals in co-housing blocks. The transformations are evaluated through their achievement in economic viability and socio-demographic effects, and then later examples are used to define the range of refurbishment costs parametrically. The applications are divided into two categories with two different scales of intervention and defined on the case study of Corso Taranto. The economic viability and socio-demographic effects are evaluated together with energy consumption simulations. Energy simulations are used to define various groups of income residents that are subjected to energy poverty. These regeneration strategies are then grouped for five future scenarios depending on their actors and viability. The study shows that a regeneration strategy supported by resident and public actors can significantly reduce energy poverty in social housing while enhancing overall building performance. Compared to that, the best result is achieved with high funds from public bodies to respond to the energy poverty and socio-demographic needs to meet the urgent housing needs.