Neighbourhood-scale Evaluation to Benchmark the Integration of Urban Sustainability (NEBIUS). An innovative education and research methodology

The holistic nature of sustainability has radically transformed architectural and urban design practices. On the one hand, it enforces the need for simple, efficient, graphical assessment tools to support communication among the stakeholders. On the other hand, creative, innovative educational methods have to be developed to teach future architects how to deal with this increased complexity. The NEBIUS education and research methodology provides an innovative framing of these challenging issues. The approach involves four major steps: 1) the development of students’ projects, from urban design to construction detail, 2) the elaboration of a limited number of radical, optimized visions based on the projects, 3) thematic analyses of the visions by experts from multiple disciplines and 4) the interdisciplinary multi-criteria assessment of the visions, with a synthetic graphic representation of the indicators establishing the sustainability profile of each vision. This paper presents the second application of NEBIUS on the Gare-Lac sector in Yverdon-les-Bains (Switzerland), a section of town that is particularly emblematic of challenges linked with urban densification strategies. The results of this educational and pedagogical experience represent a baseline from which other sustainable neighborhoods, located in diverse urban territories, can be compared and assessed, whether in academic or operational contexts.