Salvatore Greco

Choice architecture concerns different forms and procedures to present and handle a decision problem. It is a paradigm around which many theoretical results have been collected within behavioural psychology and experimental economics and many successful applications have been implemented in the domains of health, finance and social choices. In this work, we propose an application of the basic idea of architecture choice that is designing decision support procedures for complex problems, with a focus on housing realm.

We propose a development of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) permitting to use the methodology also for decision problems with a very large number of alternatives and several criteria.

The paper shows how multiple criteria decision aiding (MCDA) tools can support the analyses of six hypotheses of adaptive reuse of an iconic historical building in Turin, Italy (called stock exchange) to identify the preferred alternative. In the last 2 years, the debate around the requalification of the building has been huge for several reasons: it is perceived as a “monument” by citizens; it shows architectural and typological values nationally recognized; it involves public and private interests.