Refurbishment of Prefabricated Buildings by Innovative Strategies. The case of Soviet I-464 and I-464A series

The book collects the results of several research projects held at Department ICEA (University of Padova) focused on prefabricated buildings analysis and innovative strategies for refurbishment. The built heritage of residential housing has been rapidly downgraded owing to a merely quantitative demand for houses, to market economic laws and the resort to innovative technological though not subjected to the test- of-time solutions; as a result, such houses no longer comply with the new standards required in order to cut energy consumption. Prefabrication had a relevant role as the main means by which both eastern and western bloc European countries have been trying to meet the growing demand for housing after World War II. This work aims to suggest a methodology leading to an analysis of prefabricated buildings, focusing especially on Soviet I-464 and I-464A series (widely popular in former European socialist countries) enact a sustainable refurbishment of the buildings. The research aimed to establish a logical and methodological link between the data collected (technical data and archive results) and their analysis, so as both to assess the technological boundaries of prefabricated buildings in socialist countries and to analyse their structures with a view to collect them into a digital model. This should lead at a first step into the debate to their refurbishing/upgrading so as to retrieve it as far as architecture, functions and environment are concerned or, otherwise, to demolish these buildings.