Recovery, Enhancement and Reuse of existing building assets: Towards a new reuse for students

The paper proposes a reflection on the theme of residences for univer-sity students in Italy, with a focus on recovery, enhancement and reuse of existing buildings. Sustainable development has assumed a key role in current and future projects due, among the other factors, to the significant mobility flows generated within a territorial area by the presence of a university. Among the critical issues that currently characterize this subject are the under-sizing of residential services for students and the territorial asymmetry of the educational offer, both in the private and public sector. This problem is thus leading to the creation of flows from south to north: 36% of the structures for university education are in the north, 31.5% in the center and 32.5% in the south. Furthermore, at regional level there is the highest concentration in Lombardy, Lazio and Campania due mainly to the presence of private universities. Another critical factor is the maintenance condition of the Italian building stock, as a quarter of its total consists of build-ings realized before 1949, with 4.1% of them in poor condition. According to the latest ISTAT census, in Italy there are more than 7 million unused, abandoned or confiscated buildings among residences, factories, industrial sheds, schools etc. The WWF, at the same time reports that in the last 50 years the urbanized area has increased by 600 thousand hectares compared to a population growth of only 27%. The comparison of these data shows how the business of student housing can be an opportunity for urban regeneration for the “student cities” that today face the problem of high rents due to high demand. The research aims to demonstrate the opportunity of the recovery of buildings to accommodate university students.