LIVING LAB APPROACH TO IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF TRAINING SPACES

The EU Regulation 2021/1119 establishes the goal to reach the climatic neutrality within 2050. This is the reference horizon of the new EPBD (Energy Performance of Building Directive) in which the public buildings acquire a driving role in the ecological transition. Universities should become the catalyst elements in this process, through a human centered design process in which the direct users (students, professors, etc.) should learn and collaborate in reducing the excessive consumption of the non-renewable resources, improving the use of the renewable ones. The Living Lab (LL) is an efficient method to reach all these goals and become an educational source in the learning process for both the stakeholders and the developers. The LL is a human-centric approach which involves people in the different stages of the innovation process (Almirall and Wareham, 2011). There are 3 main components: the experimentation, which is based on everyday practices in a real environment; the development of knowledge to generate innovation; the collaboration between the users and the developers (Mbatha and Musango, 2022). There were many different versions and applications of this approach, and it became in 2006 the foundation of the ENoLL multinational organization “to promote the Living Lab concept to influence the EU policies, enhance Living Labs and enable their implementation at a global level.” (https://enoll.org/about-us/ ) The Italian University “Luigi Vanvitelli” joins in the Living Lab network through the Med-EcoSuRe project (Mediterranean University as Catalyst for Eco-Sustainable Renovation). This project aims to present an action plan for the green transition of the places of learning by involving the students in the development of energy efficiency and renewable energy solutions. This LL became a chained learning process which has as final aim the active involvement of the university Energy Managers in the creation and disclosure of knowledge and innovation. The LL approach was applied during the Indoor Sustainable Technologies course of the Bachelor of Architecture-Interior Design and for Autonomy in the Department of Architecture and Industrial Design, to design technological solutions that increase the comfort (thermo-hygrometric, visual, acoustic, air) and energy and environmental quality of classrooms through the comparative analysis of the quality measured and calculated with specialized software and the quality perceived by the direct users (the students). This study case demonstrates how important was the LL approach during the design process, becoming a tool through which the information at the base of the design process gain a subjective added value which increases the quality and the concreteness of the results. At the same time this helps the spread of good practices that can be at the base of the main goal to reach the ecological transition.