Toward a Frugal-Sustainable Built Environment: Interdisciplinary Design Method to Improve Human Well-Being

Human health and well-being have a close correlation with the built environment, both at the urban and building scales, in the public and private dimensions. The importance of the role played by architecture is evident, which, in its role of organizing space at any scale, can affect human physical and mental well-being. The aim of this paper is to identify the main intervention strategies for healthy, ecological and frugal design, with a focus on the architectural and constructive aspects of the built environment and the psychological aspects of the users. On the basis of the analyses carried out, through a context-based approach and user needs, including through the participatory tool, critical issues related to safety, mobility and, above all, community well-being emerge, very often not considered by designers. The response to these needs is therefore searched with architecture in its widest sense, in that it should not be limited to the characteristics of the built environment, but should relate directly to the lifestyles and needs of the user. The interdisciplinary approach, starting from the assessment of user needs and going through a morphological and environmental study of the places under study, proposes design guidelines in the management and development of the relationship between public open space, built environment and user. Within this framework, it also aims to respond to the vulnerability of the built environment, especially the historic one, from the new challenges of climate change to the more treated seismic risk.