The university campus as a model of environmental and settlement sustainability

The present research explores the spatial and functional structure of the university campuses in the contemporary outline of the energetic, environmental and settlement sustainability. The campuses, also due to their different origins, are neatly differentiated according to spatial and functional organisation, often causing significant effects also on the urban systems to which they are variously connected. The different rates of interference with the social and spatial dynamics of the urban systems to which they are connected turn them into extremely interesting models for their potential influence on transformation and restoration processes of the contemporary town. The long formal and energetic restoration process that has involved over the last decades many urban realities has once again highlighted the extreme importance of these places seen as open laboratories for the experimentation of innovative settlement models; socially, technologically and energetically sustainable. This has often imposed a rethinking about the strategic relationship between the university campuses and the towns. In this respect, there are significant transformation processes started by some universities which have originated deep reflections on the sustainability of the settlement and have significantly affected the local social-economic fabric. From here emerges the hypothesis of a new project scenario for the implementation of Taranto’s University Center, for which the Polytechnic of Bari is searching for new development strategies, as a laboratory for urban and environmental experimentation, able to cope with the current territorial issues and respond to the even more intricate needs of the university and urban community. The so defined procedure is articulated in three stages: • Interpretation of the “behavioural models” of the campuses; • Analysis of models and examples that interfere with the urban regeneration processes • Examination of Taranto’s University Center and its urban context, comparison with the critically inferred “model” of reference and formulation of the first project hypothesis.