The research on Design for Adaptability (DfA), Design for Flexibility (DfF), and Design for Change (DfC), developed with Carlo Antonio Stival and Paola Limoncin within THE Research Topic RT 2 of iNEST Spoke 4, addresses two complementary areas. The first explores new materials and innovative technologies, including digital applications, with the aim of reducing material intensity. The second is methodological and design-oriented, investigating case studies of interventions on existing buildings. Together, these approaches seek to ensure adaptability, flexibility, and transformability of the built environment. The work develops along several axes, assessing the innovation value of solutions against circularity, energy efficiency, and reduction of the supply chain’s ecological footprint. This multidimensional framework enables a more balanced understanding of the state of the art, avoiding strategies that privilege a single performance criterion at the expense of others. As a result, technological solutions are evaluated qualitatively across multiple concurrent parameters.
