SUSTAINABLE CONSTRUCTION, SOCIAL HEALTH AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS

Rachel Carson’s evocative words narrate us that man and nature can live jointly in harmony. The need of providing health is no longer an option, it has more than ever become a mandatory requirement for any action aimed at environmental transformation. The role the construction plays within the distribution – on land – of health conditions for humans and environment is a concept at the base of any sustainable goal that modern society should achieve. The focus on the importance of physical, psychological and social health within construction will be the main subject of these notes. From the idea of rescuing not only the Planet but mainly the environment’s and man’s health, a lot of initiatives were always born all around the world. The Environmental issues started in the XVII century after the great aggressive actions made up by the colonists in the new Ameri can Continent, thanks to the studies of a number of scientists and writers who were worried for all the wonderful landscapes which were at hazard of a whole destruction². During the 60-70s, a number of approaches developed around the world³ aimed at promoting and enhancing the strong interaction between construction and climate, already undertaken ideas by some architects in the ancient times, such as “… Vitruvius [who], drawing on earlier work, discusses the concept together with its necessary counterpart – the elements from which the shelter is required – the climate.”⁴ And finally “…these new orientations … reached a climatic expression immediately after the Arab-Israel conflict of October 1973, with the consequent reappraisal, throughout the world, of the availability and uses of globe’s fossil fuel reserves.”⁵ Following this energy question, more other topics raised the attention of scientists and population, as well as that of architects, engineers and designers. But what really turned the environmental emergency around, so as to create the contemporary approach to the knowledge as well as solut ions, was the famous book of Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, without which, “… the environmental movement might have been long delayed or never have developed at all.”⁶