Landscape valorisation. Method for sustainable urban and architectural design

The way to develop adaptation strategies for climate change involves taking into account the consequences of mitigation strategies, identifing synergies between spatial planning and design and building strategies according to policy-makers, focusing on the fact that climate change strategies are part of large-scale sustainable development and should be enhanced at all levels of governance. This implies re-orientation of sustainable strategies in order to inform the entire design process from policies to concept and building design. The paper will present a design methodology based on the integration between the disciplines of urban planning and architectural and urban design. Urban planning, has always focussed on defining large-scale project scenarios for adoption of strategies within the framework of territory and landscape planning and programming tools. It addresses these issues with particular attention to policies, rules and social actors, but should return to reflecting on the implementation and repercussions of methods for projects. Having broadened research horizons to embrace large scale and landscape issues, architectural and urban design often tend to ignore or underestimate the complex strategies, stakeholders and actors of the transformation processes, preferring “image” projects that seem to guarantee quality and consensus. Therefore, establishing a dialogue between several disciplines, a design methodology must be redefined. The “transcalar” methodology proposed assignes to each element in the territory of the analisys equal role - city, nature, agriculture, infrastructure systems, service areas, architecture - using the "trasecting sections” tool. This methodology is aimed at defining the project of complex integrated systems in order to construct scenarios of territorial and landscape transformation at different scales (from the large area to the architectural detail and technology), promoting a renewed quality of living with long-term effects.