A MINDFUL CHOICE OF BUILDING MATERIALS: A KEEN APPLICATION OF THE 4-RS OF RESILIENCE

The demand on reducing energy consumption of buildings recently became tighter and tighter, as well as the need of shortening the building materials’ supply chain. Hence, on the one hand, there is a growing interest in sustainable materials, able to reduce peak energy demand, mitigating climate change and improving indoor comfort. On the other hand, it is fundamental to design buildings able to sustain their occupants during emergencies [1] adapting their features to a changing climate, to different boundary conditions and to the progressive loss of biodiversity. It is therefore possible, applying a wider approach, to conceive resilience as another argument for sustainable design. At this regard, the main aim of the paper is to analyse traditional and innovative building materials highlighting their key-features in terms of environmental costs, energy efficiency and adaptive capabilities. Starting from the literally definition of resilience, the work will analyse its application on buildings, while looking at a wider range of tasks. This, also highlighting the four main pillars of resilience in terms of its “4-Rs” (i.e. robustness, resourcefulness, rapid recovery, redundancy) [2] and picking out the relevant connection with the well-known “3-Rs” of sustainability ( i.e. reduce, reuse, recycle). Actually, the above remarks are going to be systematically adopted in the evaluation of natural, local materials (in the Mediterranean Basin area but not only e.g. adobe bricks, rammed earth, sheep wool, reeds, cork etc.), as well as for the assessment of innovative, smart materials recently performed (and well working under the concept of resilience in architecture and construction).