The “retrofit” culture applied to the experience of INA Casa. General strategies for intervention and evaluation on a case study: The District of Barca in Bologna by Giuseppe Vaccaro.

The increasing demand for affordable housing or controlled rent accommodation, due also to the reduced purchasing power of a share of users, undoubtedly exacerbated by the economic crisis that has fallen upon global markets since the second half of 2008, highlights the need and urgency for new procedural means and standards aimed at the recovery of the existing property heritage. The subject of this research is the vast heritage of state-owned residential property, accumulated from 1949 through to 1963, through the action of the Public Housing Intervention Plan named “Gestione INA Casa”, with special reference to the target district of Barca in Bologna, by Giuseppe Vaccaro, selected as a specific case study. Attention was focussed on the improvement of heat insulation properties of the enclosure, acting exclusively from the interior to keep the specific architectural features of the INA Casa building unchanged. The objective and main target of the research consisted in the drafting of guidelines organised in charts and technical assessments for a retrofit intervention, to apply to the INA Casa residential property, specifically in the cases in which interventions from the outside are not possible. In the last phase of research, an evaluation was made of the economic sustainability of this energy requalification intervention, simulated in order to draw up the said guidelines. The methodological approach selected in this case, i.e. the assessment model used, is defined as the Cost and Revenue Analysis (CRA). In the case in question, comparable to a renovation project in terms of energetic requalification and subsequently placed on the market (in other words let at a fixed rent or sold as a property), this model, by means of a discounted cash flow (DCF), enables an assessment of the economic profitability of a property investment. Lastly, the hypothesis was formulated to make use of instruments and conventional means already in place in the specific market of social housing, and which can guarantee the potential funding of an intervention such as that simulated in the case study. More specifically, the hypothesis was made of the possibility of setting up a closed property investment fund by transferring the property share still owned by the state. The subjects potentially interested in the procedures developed and in the results obtained, are the various “Aziende casa” (Regional housing authorities) present in Italy and public administration authorities, such as Municipal authorities, who are entrusted with the ownership of a residential complex due to undergo retrofit interventions for maintenance purposes and to enable these properties to subsequently be placed on the social housing market. Other potential user subjects are the freelance professionals assigned with requalification of the share of INA Casa buildings transferred to private ownership