Energy-Active Architectures and the Struggle for Sustainable Mediterranean Cities

The built environment is not a neutral backdrop to the energy transition; it is one of its most active battlegrounds. Buildings shape how energy is produced, consumed, valued, and contested, embedding within their walls the logics of markets, the rhythms of daily life, and the fractures of socio-e conomic access. Traversing within the Mediterranean city, where dense fabrics, climatic pressures, and architectural heritage collide with the urgency of sustainability, this work unravels the messy, interdependent dynamics that link energy policy, technological innovation, homeowner decision-making, valuation systems, and real estate markets. Far from offering a seamless pathway to low-carbon futures, the energy transition within the built environment is revealed as fragmented, hesitant, and socially uneven. Photovoltaic-integrated façades, bioclimatic designs, multi-storey innovations, and energy-efficient certifications circulate as promises, yet their materialization is conditioned by broken metrics, contested valuations, and persistent adoption barriers. Certification tools misrepresent performance, markets discount energy efficiency, and sustainable architecture is often reserved for the few who can afford to access it. Through a close engagement with case studies, valuation 2 practices, homeowner agency, and urban design responses, a deeply situated understanding of sustainability is attempted, one that moves beyond technological prescriptions and confronts the social life of buildings. Arguing that sustainability cannot be certified into existence; it must be built, valued, negotiated, and ultimately lived. Challenging the notion of inevitable progress, while offering a narrative of entanglements, ruptures, and the everyday negotiations through which the energy transition is contested, materialized, and sometimes deferred.