From the Trombe Wall to the Greenhouse. Architectural Inquiry about European Housing for a Circular Economy after 1973.

This paper is part of a wider research that focuses on the 1970s, when architectural debate and practice saw an enormous increase in the attention for the various ways that architecture and the built environment relates to questions of energy, economy, natural resources and society. In effect before and after the 1973 oil crisis, such events happened: the drastic increase of oil prices at the beginning of the decade, the UN meeting in Stockholm culminating with the publication of Limits to Growth1 in 1972, the financial crisis subsequent to the oil crisis from 1973 until 1976. Architects, scientists and researchers reacted to these events proposing theories, methods, tools and projects in order to: intervene innovatively in terms of energy efficiency, especially in relation to housing; rethink the relation between architecture, resources and energy. The paper analyse tools of the architect to intervene in the built environment in projects related to housing in the central western European climatic zone classified as Temperate Oceanic Climate2. It focuses in particular on solar houses using as energy storages the thermal masses of architectural elements as: internal walls, external walls (e.g. Trombe Wall) and floor slabs.