In the marginal areas of the Alps, there is a huge built heritage expressed by local communities, resulting in an architectural model that is sustainable in terms of its material use, resource exploitation, and landscape coherence. Although buildings in these small settlements have been largely protected from transformation, currently this heritage is largely underused. Thus, it is desirable to consider reuse and enhancement actions that can combine both economic viability and the protection of historic, cultural and architectural values. This paper presents a multi-attribute model for the evaluation of sustainability in reuse projects concerning traditional buildings in the Italian Alpine settlements. For the appraisal of sustainability, the model uses relevant parameters aggregated into three macro-indicators. The model was calibrated by an expert panel and tested on reuse projects in Sauris, in north-eastern Italy, where residential building type is characterized by specific techniques that are expressions of community traditions. The main results show that the attributes aggregation function is predominantly andness in all nodes. A short range in sustainability assessment is a predictable result, as the buildings used for the model’s application give a common judgment in some attributes. Finally, activities for widespread hospitality generate a greater expected return compared to commercial services.

Social housing constitutes a partial response to the demand for affordable housing. In Europe, there are different forms of social housing, which are distinguishable based on whether they employ a universal or residual approach. The latter is employed by Italian initiatives for social residential construction, the financial instrument of which is the Investment Fund for Housing, a closed-end fund managed by CDP (Cassa Depositi e Prestiti) Investment, which provides public–private partnerships. The main obstacle to the supply of low-cost houses is the high cost of building areas or, in other words, the high urban land rent. The value of building areas is particularly high in urban areas and in widespread settlement areas, for instance, in Northeastern Italy. The main objective of this paper is to identify the trade-off between urban land rent and housing affordability in a social housing intervention in Pordenone (Northeastern Italy). Four different scenarios are developed, the variables of which are: Cost of the area (urban rent), cost of construction works (quality of the buildings), and household income distribution. The results show that achieving the economic and social objectives of a social housing investment simultaneously is not possible in any of the scenarios evaluated. To allow the social groups most in need to access affordable housing would require a reduction of approximately 30% of the estimated cost of a building area.

The residential district in Panzano is an urban area which was built beginning in 1907 for the Monfalcone shipyard’s employees and workers. In the 1930s, the shipyard was one of the most important plants of this kind in the world. The district’s realization is mainly attributed to engineer Dante Fornasir, who headed the building association entrusted to construct the area from 1913 to 1939. The district was inaugurated in 1927: at that time, more than 190 residential buildings of various types, shops, and many community facilities were operative. The Panzano District, based on the garden-city urban model, shows an articulated structure that defines the correspondence between shipyard employees’ tasks and the residential types; the village architecture exemplifies an historicist perspective and contains interesting elements of modern urban planning. After a long period of decay, the district was subjected to a carefully planned and integrated conservation that has led to a compatible reuse of its residential buildings.

This paper focuses on the valuation of refurbishment costs for healthcare facilities. The determination of the more reliable approach for experimental verification is a research topic of great interest, especially because previous literature on the matter is limited. This study examines ex-ante cost valuations in the refurbishment of healthcare buildings while using similarity to estimate the costs that are based on the amount of already accomplished renovations. The methodology involved a desk analysis deter-mining the technical valuation of intervention needs, and similarity coefficient applications providing a refurbishment cost valuation. The application was conducted in the Friuli—Venezia Giulia Region in Italy, where hospitals show structural, layout, and plants deficits with respect to current regulations, and a technical deepening to identify critical issues is required to prepare a multi-year intervention plan. The case study results showed that this procedure requires little initial information to run analyses and its application can support investment budget planning purposes.