Contemporary Paradigms for a 'Sustainable' Construction: Development of Design Strategies and Building Materials for Restoration, Reuse and Civil Engineering

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to invite you to submit articles to the upcoming Special Issue on the interdisciplinary topic of sustainable constructions. Newly designed buildings and the safeguard of the existing ones occupy a significant place in the global economy as well as representing a massive consumer base of raw materials and natural resources, generating about the 39% of the world’s carbon emissions, according to the World Green Building Council.

Throughout history, the relationship between people and their habitat has been very complex; human beings can not imagine themselves outside the built environment and yet they fuel a paradox whereby they feel excluded from nature, as something serving as a background and container for their cities. It is precisely this cultural construct that causes an anthropocentric bias that emphasizes a series of misunderstandings: e.g., not necessarily are humans' actions on the contemporary world inherently destructive. In the same way, it is artificial to separate and hierarchize the anthropic elements from the natural ones, especially in an age when these two factors are inextricably mixed.

Therefore, the term re-use, in restoration and generally in architecture, means not only to use buildings but most of all to make them used or even better usable again. This approach comprises all the features of a double ‘overwriting’ of cultural heritage. The first arises from the problem of adapting ancient buildings to today’s needs, involving not only the evolution of up-to date seismic requirements but also accessibility issues in case of new functions (e.g. museums, public buildings, etc.). The second overwriting deals with the cultural and material interpretation of places. When the missing parts of a building are restored, its original colours, the space of the rooms, and the logical sequence behind their architectural composition must be redressed. Two strands of needs that are both equally valid and that introduce the concept of queerness applied to architecture are discussed. Going back to the roots of this expression—more commonly associated with the struggles for sexual and gender emancipation—it conceptually aims at a more generic dismantling and demystification of what is considered ‘canon’, regular, and encoded. From a spatial–architectural point of view, queering a space therefore means denying its neutrality and its inclusion in contingent and exclusionary hierarchies. At the same time, it means reading it for what it really is: no longer a simple backdrop to human actions, or an empty space to be ‘colonized’ but rather a place full of intraspecific relationships that must be valorised through interdisciplinary approaches addressing sustainability in a broader sense.

Original research articles and review papers are welcome in this SI; research topics may cover (but are not limited to) the following subjects:

• Interdisciplinary strategies for the effective sustainable design of new buildings or interventions;
• The prototyping of innovative construction materials and techniques;
• Eco-friendly materials for the structural and energetic retrofitting of heritage buildings;
• Numerical strategies for ancient masonry buildings and infrastructures;
• BIM applied to the management of heritage;
• A critical analysis of virtuous real case studies involving art and architecture;
• Interactions between reuse, restoration, and structural engineering;
• Architectural quality intertwined with social and environmental ethics.

Prof. Dr. Stefano Galassi
Dr. Riccardo Liberotti
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• heritage architectures
• inclusivity
• sustainable design
• composite materials
• numerical modelling
• strengthening strategies
• restoration and retrofitting
• museal accessibility