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International research on sustainable architecture ascertained the responsibilities of urban forms for buildings energy-environmental performances, highlighting the necessity to broaden the field of intervention in urban design. Furthermore, goals concerning the sustainable city increased design complexity, due to the involvement of different interrelated disciplines, which modified design processes by incorporating external contributions. In particular, environmental analyses are growing in importance and need to be reintegrated into the urban project at the conceptual stage. This environmental awareness accompanies the history of the city, and numerous pieces of evidence clearly show the mutual and in-depth relationship between urban form and local microclimates. Lessons from the ancients constituted the fundamentals in urban design until the Modern Movement, during which knowledge of the past also influenced the work of G. Vinaccia, an Italian pioneer in microclimatic urban design. "fter the World War II, most of the lessons had been forgotten in favour of technology systems that have since revealed their failures. The current design condition requires a discovery of past abilities, coupling them with contemporary scientific advances. This work introduces a methodology through which to integrate current urban design processes with environmental data and analyses. It is illustrated through a case study and is supported by software.

Because of his classification as a minor architect, Gaetano Vinaccia's (1881Vinaccia's ( -1971 role in the history of architecture has not been studied in depth. Despite the fact that his impact on the debate about rational architecture was limited, the depth and scientific accuracy of his theoretical contribution to the field of microclimatology in relation to urban design issues deserve to be highlighted, especially today when environmental and bioclimatic questions arise strongly in architecture and planning. Thus, this work aims to reconsider this figure by describing the-unfavorable-context in which his work evolved, by bringing to light his most brilliant statements, by reading his scientific productions, and by starting to consider the validity of some of Vinaccia's intuitions and their actual correspondence with contemporary research. The question of whether Vinaccia can be considered as an innovator (or not) largely derives from the point of view of architectural criticism and the fact that he did not have a well-defined discipline in which to be classified. Despite the fact that his The City of Tomorrow (1943Tomorrow ( -1952, which is the first complete treatise on the subject, reveals that he was an absolute pioneer, he has had no chance to influence architecture and urbanism until today.

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Cities with more than 75% of consumption and 85% of global CO 2 emissions are a major problem in our country. The continuous process of urbanization highlights the human need of city and denounces the need to transform the urban settlement from a weak to a strong future sustainability. Urban form and functions are deeply related to the availability of the energy resources in the territory, comparing the behavior of the city to a living organism, dependent on the energy flows in and out. This one-to-one relationship between form and energy sources historically proved that emphasize mutations engender each other on their development and their decline. According to scientific studies, relevant "physical" factors, such as morphology and density, directly affect a settlement's energy behaviour and its microclimate. The uniqueness of each city and their ability to work simultaneously on local and global objectives has driven Europe to indicate cities as a crux and urban design as the appropriate tool for defining the shape and land uses compatible with sustainability goals. Because of historical ties linking urban form and energy sources, the force switchover to renewable sources raises the question what will be the future shape of the sustainable city. The use of urban design as a tool to influence urban form becomes an essential prerogative to bear on urban form and reach the optimal condition of energy's self-sustainable island.