Sharing Innovation. The Acceptability of Off-site Industrialized Systems for Housing

Abstract

AbstractFrom the sixties, innovation and industrialization have been a returning mantra for the construction sector at every new building cycle passage after an economic crisis, as a tool of overcoming difficulties. This positivism has always been disregarded, especially for housing and for Italy. To avoid this dynamic recurrence even in the current ecological transition passage, research must provide, in parallel with innovative products and techniques, innovative cultural approaches so that extraordinary products and techniques can be accepted by the market, demonstrating how the synergy between them leads to a high added value for sustainable quality of living. Most of the actors (from designers to builders and maintainers) agree that innovative systems, especially industrialized off-site, are more sustainable, especially today when sustainability and resilience are the core of the construction sector; despite this, these systems are struggling to spread. This contribution focuses on acceptability and decision-making processes that lead to innovative choices, identifying the innovation of the functional, social and economic management of the buildings as the “missing ring” for housing. This acceptability has certainly increased today because of new form of “atypical” living, such as senior/student and temporary housing and co-living, which contribute to intensifying the demand of “industrialized”, flexible, affordable and reliable houses. Technological innovation, in fact, actives only if technical innovation is combined with strategies and new approaches in organization, marketing and after-sales services focused on sharing and participation. Through an example of a realized off-site transformable residential building and case studies of new form of management, this contribution proposes innovation perspectives capable of overcoming design and decision-making obstacles to the spread of off-site systems, also identifying in the institutional sustainability one of the cores of this subject.