“There’s a certain Slant of light…”. The tools of qualitative forecasting and interpretative synthesis of environmental factors in the field of sustainable architectural and urban design

Experiences in energy upgrading for Modern heritage demonstrate that the simple reapplication of general practice risks losing an overall conception of the built work, including in cases where the original project drew on resource-optimisation criteria similar to the current requirements for environmental sustainability. The present study examines this context, drawing on two programs of applied research: the first concerning materials and Modern architectural design under Italian “autarchy”; the second concerning more general problems of sustainable rehabilitation for 20th century heritage properties. The two programs share a research methodology in which the knowledge-building stage extends to interpretation of the construction, in terms of the “technological culture” of the original architectural planning