Sustainable farm building design: focus on landscape integration based on historic consistency

The design of contemporary farm buildings often subordinates quality and aesthetic features to economic aspects, thus leading to poor landscape consistency and compatibility. In this context, we developed the FarmBuiLD research model, proposed as a tool for the analysis of the architectural characters of both historical and contemporary rural buildings, as well as the meta-design of new construction and transformation of contemporary farm buildings. We based on the theoretical principle that historical rural buildings, being expression of an accumulation of empirical knowledge broadly associated with high architectural quality, have remarkable potentials to contribute with useful elements to the design of contemporary buildings, and on the awareness that the design process is also necessarily and substantially determined by technological, economic and functional variables. The work focuses on the implementation of the FarmBuiLD model with reference to an Italian study area.