**5. Conclusion**

According to most current scholars, goals in sustainable architecture need to be approached via the urban dimension. The necessity of this 'change of scale' has been proved, in the last few years, in several national and international scientific works, in which authors highlighted the benefits that are achievable—in relation to both climate change goals and energy issues. In order to overcome sustainable challenges, urban design, which falls in between city planning and architectural design, becomes the appropriate tool through which operate, thanks to its ability to solve 'upstream' the buildings' environmental and energy deficiencies. The strategy was common in ancient times, when bioclimatic urban solutions were applied, both to mitigate extreme environmental conditions and to exploit passively the sun's heat in wintertime. Examples of 'solar cities' across the history of architecture until World War II, after which technology‐system diffusion and the functions' specializations, were deemed less interesting in environmental practices. Despite the fact that bioclimatism partially caught on during the energy and environmental crises of the 1970s and 1980s, it was mainly applied to single buildings, neglecting urban theories. Today, when important research has shown the limits of strategies related to energy consumption reduction in single buildings and favours broader policies, ancient lessons have acquired relevance. In particular, the 'polyhedral' figures of past architects have gained in prominence, as they have provided us with extensive interdisciplinary knowledge. A significant example is the figure of Gaetano Vinaccia, an Italian architect and pioneer in urban microclimate design. Although he is classified as a minor architect and only a little information is available regarding his biography, his most cited work, *La Città di Domani, Come il clima plasma la forma urbana e l'architettura: la sanità e l'igiene cittadina, Vol. 1* (1943), can be considered the first complete treatise on urban environmental design and marks him out as an absolute innovator. These urban environmental principles, which allowed past technicians to manage urban shapes and functions without renouncing quality of space, have to be recovered by contemporary architects. Scientific progress over the last few decades allows architects and planners to reintegrate the project process with the important contribu‐ tions of external disciplines. Complexities resulting from this multidisciplinary perspective call for an update to the current process, without it being overcome by those complexities. In this light, the methodology tested through the Monserrato case study offers a point of view on current design practices.
