PANNELLI SOCIALI

Garbatella is an area of Rome known for its peculiar architecture – barocchetto romano style mixed to garden-city look – and for its social and cultural awareness. The area is a perfect example of urban regeneration done through bottom-up approach.

Our project proposal is to improve energy efficiency, which would lie in an annex to the project called Neighbourhood Contracts taken from Department Suburbs Local development. The proposal is about both implementing photovoltaic panels on the top of the roof of a architectural complex in the center of Garbatella and inhancing environmental awareness by the.realization of a pedal powered machine.

The complex includes the CSOA La Strada – an self-managed social center-, a Ciclofficina La Strada – a bicycle cooperative, the Farmer’s Market - a local market, and Millepiani coworking office. These entities represent the key stakeholders for the project. The main actor will be the CSOA La Strada social center, which will provide its premises to organize energy awareness days. The events will be special occasions for fundraising. The stakeholders directly consulted are two: La Strada and Ciclofficina.

The machine will be constructed using second hand bicycles given by the bicycle cooperative. The photovoltaic panels are designed on the top of the roof in order to to reduce the network load power consumption, introducing a generation of sustainable energy, and using a space until now unused.

The CO2 avoided by using the panels would be 932,5 ton CO2 considering 25 years of energy production by photovoltaic panels. The advantages of the project would be not only of environmental nature, but also economical, since it will be substantial savings in the bill no longer charged to the municipality. Nevertheless, there are possible risks by adopting such energy strategy: the end-of-life of the whole plant must be taken into consideration; moreover, it is important to not neglect which are the environmental impact of the realization and dismantle of the panels, the progressive degradation of the panels and the electric contacts.