The Redevelopment of Post-Earthquake 1980 Neighbourhoods in Naples: Climate-Oriented Building Retrofit and Preservation of Design Cultural Values and Authorship Conditions

The reuse of buildings of documentary value, as an expression of authorship and of a research trajectory within the debate on contemporary architectural design, represents a sustainable retrofitting approach, as it enables the extension of the life cycle of buildings as a resource. The adaptive reuse of buildings entails several cultural and technical challenges for a balance between conservation and transformation. This topic lies in the Italian debate on the technological, energy and housing needs inadequacy of the housing stock. Within this scenario, the PINQuA—Programma Innovativo Nazionale per la Qualità dell’Abitare (Innovative National Programme for Housing Quality) constitutes an innovative factor in the process of upgrading socially, physically, and functionally degraded housing contexts. The paper investigates the sustainable redevelopment of architects Franco Purini and Laura Thermes’ residential building block in the Marianella neighbourhood in Northern Naples. The methodology is based on the identification of the conditions of authorship, the relationship with the values of the pre-existing elements of the urban environment, and the expression of 1980s architecture. The results of the design proposal are measured by indicators of environmental and energy performance. The design proposal develops a retrofitting approach for contemporary housing by maintaining the residential function and reusing public and collective spaces adapted to the new climate regime and social needs.