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The Greenest Building Is... One That Is Already Built
Abstract
In the five years since the Greenest Building article first appeared, a great deal has changed. While there has been significant progress integrating historic preservation into initiatives promoting green building and sustainable communities, unfortunately the most dramatic development has been unproductive and discouraging. The emerging culture change that I so hopefully pointed to in 2007 has devolved into the culture wars of 2012!
First, the progress: In most quarters, the sustainability community is coming to recognize the importance of existing and historic buildings and to respect the expertise residing in the historic preservation field. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has contributed substantially to this "maturing" relationship.
The Trust has engaged the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) to raise awareness of existing and historic buildings and to modify green building rating systems to more appropriately reflect their value. While this process is arguably still in its infancy, its significance should not be underestimated. The Trust co-sponsored with the National Center for Preservation Training and Technology (NCPTT) the Pocantico Symposium where five principles were articulated to recast historic preservation objectives in sustainability terms. And perhaps most importantly, the Trust's Preservation Green Lab published its groundbreaking study (The Greenest Building: Quantifying the Value of Building Reuse) that demonstrates in great detail the technical, not just philosophical, truth behind my oft-quoted proposition that the greenest building is one that is already built.
Recent studies are demonstrating that older buildings are inherently green and can be retrofitted to become more energy efficient.
There are many other examples of progress. In university historic preservation programs around the country, students are turning their attention to the inherent green attributes of historic structures. Professional literature on sustainable preservation now fills an entire shelf in my library. (Of particular note is the authoritative volume by Jean Carroon, FAIA: Sustainable Preservation, Greening Historic Buildings.) The National Park Service has appended the Secretary of the Interior's Standards with the Illustrated Guidelines on Sustainability for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings. And most importantly, the portfolio of successful sustainable preservation projects has multiplied many times over.
However, in 2007 I believed there was growing evidence that a corner had been turned. I saw that as a nation, we were beginning to face the challenges of climate change by seizing the opportunities of sustainability. But instead, over the last five years the United States has entered an era of gridlock and ever more strident proclamations about true American values. Where once political correctness meant navigating the shoals of gender and ethnic sensitivity, today it means denying overwhelming scientific evidence of the human causes of climate change in the name of respecting alternative explanations. Parallels to the decades of debate over the health risks of tobacco are obvious.
If there were no consequences to such willful ignorance, I would simply leave it alone. Unfortunately, the stakes could not be higher, especially for historic resources. While this disingenuous debate rages across the airwaves nationally, at the local level nearly every coastal city struggles to formulate both emergency and long range plans for "adaptation" to the impacts of climate change, impacts that threaten many of the most beloved historic places in the United States of America. There is no way for historic preservation advocates to sidestep the debate. If we truly value our heritage, it is time to defend it against forces that threaten it, even if we offend fraudulent political correctness in the process.
A page has turned. In decades hence, 2006 may well be regarded as the year when the national discussion about the future of our cities, perhaps our civilization, changed from a debate over whether human impacts on the environment are leading to potentially severe problems to one focused on what we can do to diminish and even reverse them. Halleluiah!
Evidence for this supposition is widespread. Certainly, Al Gore's Oscar-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth, has been singularly important in raising public awareness and defining environmental stewardship as a fundamental trait of American patriotism. Today, preventing climate change is the rallying call for millions, not just the environmental intelligentsia. There are hundreds of examples of how deeply our sense of national purpose has...
... Technical aspects can refer to both environmental and economic benefits, related mainly to a lower consumption of energy and materials [18,19] as well as the cost-effectiveness of adaptation as opposed to demolition and reconstruction [20]. Adaptation is an effective and environmentally responsible approach [21] and a contribution towards achieving circular economies and avoiding soil consumption and a waste of resources [22]. Secondly, it is social, referring to social equity, well-being, and quality of life. ...
... Construction of an incremental architecture and value creation strategy, adaptable and replicable according to the architectural characteristics of open-plan Rationalist architecture. The different steps of the methodology aim at tackling the highlighted technical, social, economic, and typological issues [9,21]. The possibility of innovative development of these properties, as dormant capitals spread over the territory, emerges precisely because of the various considerations of their potential value-not only economic but other forms of value, too. ...
... An observation of the data and an understanding of the context are necessary to enable the exploration of reuse possibilities and evaluate their potential. Indeed, the success of an adaptive reuse project depends on a variety of factors, including location and the building's ability to support certain activities, all of which must be evaluated in timely fashion in advance of the proposal [13,21]. The demand analysis allows us to investigate the context and interests of future users. ...
Adaptive reuse has progressively become a useful approach for generating new values concerning abandoned or underused buildings, sites, and areas to the extent that the topic is no longer conceived and perceived merely as a “bricks-and-mortar” issue. Instead, it has a dual nature: (i) one that is technical, linked to the difficult balance between low costs and fostering sustainable building solutions, and (ii) one that is social, which refers to social equity, well-being, and quality of life. Within this context, urban and architectural transformations are among those human activities that play a key role in shaping the territory in an increasingly invasive acceleration of urbanization processes. However, it is precisely here that adaptive reuse can counteract such alterations. This paper proposes a sustainable, economically feasible, and replicable valorisation model for the evaluation of adaptive reuse possibilities of a particular historical–architectural heritage, which is vast and widespread in Italy and an important example of Rationalist architecture. Such a model incorporates flexible and easily replicable spatial implications precisely because it is specifically related to the characteristics of an open-plan structure. In doing so, it aims to redefine the valorisation model based on a constant dialogue between the project and market analysis; the replicability of project strategies for “families” of historic buildings; and the need for the project’s ability to change and adapt according to emerging requirements.
... Co-ordinate for feasibility studies for adaptive re-use rather than demolition [31] 4b ...
... Co-ordinate for environmentally friendly decommissioning plans [31] 4c ...
... Monitoring for compliance to regulations, agreed standards or requirements [14,17] 4d Co-ordinate and implement a site waste management policy plan as per context [31] 4e ...
Despite ample technological advancements, the building industry is still seen as an unsustainable activity. To counteract this, building development is now being requested to be more sustainable. Due to the increasing complexity of sustainable projects' criteria, the project manager's role, tasked with the overall management of a building's different development phases, is changing, becoming increasingly crucial for the attainment of pre-established sustainability goals. Based on this premise, the research presented in this paper is a pilot study set to preliminarily establish and identify a set of project management processes and supporting practices from existing literature, and gauge their significance and possible added value provided. This was done via a purposely designed questionnaire distributed locally, in Malta, and globally amongst established project managers. Notwithstanding the preliminary nature of the study some interesting results were obtained. Among the main outcomes of the study, it is observed how all respondents are very aware about sustainability issues and that their decision-making role places them in an optimum position to bring forward a sustainability agenda for a particular project. In terms of intervention, pre-construction (43%) and construction (28%) were considered to be the main stages were a project manager usually gives the highest input. However, various challenges were also highlighted by the respondents, including clients' refusal to commit increased capital (34%), the requirement for further training (33%), and the lack of incentives aimed towards increasing the sustainability of projects (22%).
... At the building scale, the primary means for achieving demand reduction is reusing the existing building stock through flexible space management, retrofits, and adaptive reuse (Elefante 2012;Frey et al. 2011;Hasik et al. 2019). Salvaging and recycling building materials through deconstruction is another essential component of demand reduction. ...
... Depending on the building type and grid mix, it can take from 10 to 80 years for new construction to compensate for climate impacts as compared to an upgraded existing building (Frey et al. 2011;Hasik et al. 2019). These studies bear out the notion that "the greenest building is one that is already built (Elefante 2012)." A study of a new conventional residential development in Finland revealed that over the 50-year time horizon relevant to climate targets, the emissions from a comparable renovation were 35% lower. ...
With anticipation building around embodied carbon as a “new frontier” of climate policy, it may appear that cities need to develop a whole suite of dedicated institutions and mechanisms to support its implementation. However, to do so risks placing an undue burden on already overstretched local and regional governments. Instead, embodied carbon policy can build on existing priorities that already galvanize resources and attention and have benefited from decades of policy development. Making strong links to a larger urban agenda offers a way to forge buy-in from a wide range of stakeholders. Current visions for embodied carbon policy broadly fall into two categories: (1) material substitution strategies, or technical solutions that incrementally reduce emissions, and (2) demand reduction strategies, more transformative solutions that avoid emissions. Both of these areas have strong ties to existing urban strategies for waste, equity, and preservation. Foundations in waste policy include increasing waste diversion, expanding green demolition, and increasing material efficiencies. Foundations in equity-oriented policy include retrofitting affordable housing, workforce development for deconstruction, and building lower carbon, lower cost housing. Foundations in preservation policy include incentivizing building reuse, supporting the use of low carbon materials for retrofits, and encouraging vertical infill. Amplifying existing policy efforts can bring substantive embodied carbon reductions to the forefront, leapfrogging a long technical start-up phase for implementing stand-alone embodied carbon policy.
... "The greenest building is the one that already exists". These were the words of Carl Elefante, former president of the American Institute of Architects [32]. On this, it is universally recognized that building replacement entails high energy-consumption as there ...
... "The greenest building is the one that already exists". These were the words of Carl Elefante, former president of the American Institute of Architects [32]. On this, it is universally recognized that building replacement entails high energy-consumption as there are an abundance of variables involved in the decision to demolish including the embodied energy of the edifice, the energy consumed in its construction and the reception, recycling and disposal of resulting waste and rubbles. ...
A multidisciplinary approach embedded with sustainability represents a pathway to design strategies applicable in different cultural contexts. Considering the emissions attributed to building processes, the design of conservation measures is evolving to create high performance both in terms of healthiness and safety. On this, heritage buildings in earthquake-prone cities proved their vulnerability during the recent seismic events. However, the most important aspect of restoration interventions is that the design process must respect the architectural peculiarities of the building. In this regard, the contribution presents the reuse of a heritage building, currently disused, in the novel role of University of Perugia’s plaster cast gallery, in line with the aims declared by the University with the adoption of the “Action Plan for University Sustainability 2021–2023”. Such architecture is part of Palazzo Murena, University of Perugia headquarters, a former monastery designed by Luigi Vanvitelli and completed in 1762 by Carlo Murena. A historical-iconographical investigation, together with a survey, revealed the building origin: a pre-existing architecture, anciently a hospice, included by Vanvitelli in their project. The purpose was the masonries’ reinforcement conceiving, at once, a flexible space according to the adaptive architecture principle: give to buildings configurations new, whole or in part, from the original ones in response to emerging threats. An integrated project was designed to restore the building in order to realize a contemporary museum in which full-height exhibition spaces alternate with the pre-existing ones. In this way, the new Gypso|TechA showcases the academic plasters, actually without a seat matching their cultural value, and through a peculiar layout encodes the collection’s message in a site-specific cognitive process.
... owners, investors and public Decision Makers (DMs)-who must all interact with each other. From an architectural standpoint, adaptive reuse has become a valuable approach for the sustainable rebirth of the city (Dewiyana et al. 2016;Permata et al. 2020), encouraging the reuse of existing and abandoned sites and buildings, avoiding the waste of energy and materials that new construction entails (Conejos et al. 2014;Elefante 2007), preserving a portion of the urban landscape and delivering new social and economic profits (Dewiyana et al. 2016;Dyson et al. 2016;Douglas 2006). ...
... Consequently, adaptive reuse not only plays a significant role in the regeneration of the built environment, with respect to the conservation of architectural heritage values (Kıran Çakır et al. 2020), but can also be considered as an essential contribution to achieving circular economies in cities and territories, avoiding the waste of environmental and cultural resources (Della Spina 2020). Addressing the problem of reuse from an adaptive perspective (Günçea and Mısırlısoy 2015, Young and Chan 2012) is an increasingly widespread strategy for existing buildings: extending their life delivers economic benefits to investors (Dyson et al. 2016, Douglas 2006) and contributes to global climate protection and emission reduction (Conejos et al. 2014, Elefante 2007. More specifically, a sizable body of literature states that adapting a building or an area is cheaper than creating a new one (Douglas 2006, Bullen and Love 2011b, Remøy and Van der Voordt 2007, Kohler and Yang 2007. ...
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. In this context, we tested the applicability of a recently proposed multicriteria decision making methodology to architecture field. This decision support approach is a conjunction of four MCDA methods, namely: multiple criteria hierarchy process (MCHP), permitting to consider structural relationships between criteria; ELECTRE III, considering three types of interaction effects between criteria (strengthening, weakening and antagonistic effects); the imprecise SRF method, supplying an easily understandable approach to collect information from the Decision Maker; and stochastic multicriteria acceptability analysis (SMAA), providing robust recommendation, in terms of rankings and relations of preference, indifference and incomparability between project alternatives, at each level of the hierarchy. We propose a modification of the SRF methodology, called SFR-II, to increase the reliability of the decision aid procedure, which could constitute a significant advance for the same SRF method.
... The first is through the demolition and reconstruction of existing buildings and neighborhoods. The second is to upscale existing assets through strategies aimed at enhancing the value of the existing building stock [16][17][18]. The choice between these two options is widely debated by academicians and scholars worldwide. ...
... In terms of the cost of these interventions, some researchers argue that, under certain conditions, the reuse of existing buildings is more cost-effective than demolition and reconstruction [5,18,21,31]. Regular building maintenance and renovation can significantly reduce building degradation and obsolescence over time. Furthermore, these operations have significantly lower costs than those of extraordinary restructuring [5,21,27,31,32], and some scholars measure the economic advantages of urban reuse through financial analysis [33,34] or statistical methodologies [35][36][37][38]. ...
Local administrators and private investors rely on various urban redevelopment strategies, the choice of which depends on the economic expectations of property owners and investors. Some of these options foresee replacing obsolete buildings with new constructions; others prefer the reuse of existing assets. This study examines the conditions that make these different strategies feasible, bringing to light the aspects that favor demolition and reconstruction processes over interventions based on the redevelopment of existing assets. The analysis focuses on the variables that determine the choice between these two options. The model that has been developed highlights, on one hand, the role of urban planning tools and urban densification and, on the other, the relationship between the land market and the value of existing assets. The model has been tested on five cities in northern Italy, which fall into three territorial categories—large metropolitan cities, medium-sized cities, and cities of limited rank—to test how different social and economic contexts affect the feasibility of the strategies we evaluated. The results of the study underscore the extent to which the demolition and reconstruction of existing assets is only viable in certain limited areas and under particular market and settlement conditions. While large metropolitan areas seem to have the option of radically replacing existing real estate assets, medium-sized cities and especially small cities are constrained in redeveloping existing urban assets and must forego demolition and reconstruction projects, which do not prove to be economically feasible.
... O autor atesta que tal como vem sendo defendida por documentos internacionais como a Carta de Veneza (1964), a Carta de Nara (1994) ou The World Heritage Carl Stein constituem as fontes que guiam os debates em sala de aula. O primeiro com The Greenest Building is ... one that is already built(Elefante, 2007) enquanto o segundo com Greening Modernism: preservation, sustainability and the modern movement(Stein, 2010).A maior contribuição do texto deElefante (2007) é alertar para o fato de que a busca pela salvação da humanidade frente à crise climática por meio da proposta de uma nova arquitetura verde é vã considerada a vastidão do estoque de edifícios já construídos. Ou seja, para o autor, mesmo se toda a nova arquitetura e urbanismo fossem concebidas, construídas e vividas de forma verde, ainda assim, o desafio à sustentabilidade estaria colocado. ...
... O autor atesta que tal como vem sendo defendida por documentos internacionais como a Carta de Veneza (1964), a Carta de Nara (1994) ou The World Heritage Carl Stein constituem as fontes que guiam os debates em sala de aula. O primeiro com The Greenest Building is ... one that is already built(Elefante, 2007) enquanto o segundo com Greening Modernism: preservation, sustainability and the modern movement(Stein, 2010).A maior contribuição do texto deElefante (2007) é alertar para o fato de que a busca pela salvação da humanidade frente à crise climática por meio da proposta de uma nova arquitetura verde é vã considerada a vastidão do estoque de edifícios já construídos. Ou seja, para o autor, mesmo se toda a nova arquitetura e urbanismo fossem concebidas, construídas e vividas de forma verde, ainda assim, o desafio à sustentabilidade estaria colocado. ...
A formação e capacitação profissional para pensar e agir sobre/na preservação do patrimônio cultural moderno constitui uma atividade relativamente nova, se comparada àquela associada à prática preservacionista dita tradicional. No contexto brasileiro, as primeiras inserções do conteúdo patrimonial nos cursos de arquitetura e urbanismo se dão nos anos setenta do século XX. Na capital nacional, a Universidade de Brasília – UnB, passa a oferecer no segundo semestre de 2002, como disciplina obrigatória do Curso de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo, Técnicas Retrospectivas – PROAU8 voltada para o projetar no construído. A chegada do tema da preservação, de uma maneira geral e, particularmente, do moderno, no Programa de Pós-Graduação da Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade de Brasília, é recente: 2017. Estudos Especiais em Teoria, Histórica e Crítica – Pensar e Agir sobre o Patrimônio Moderno constitui uma das duas disciplinas que, desde então, vêm sendo ofertadas na Linha de Patrimônio Cultural. E é sobre ela que versa o artigo. Trata-se de partilhar e abrir ao debate a experiência da formação para o patrimônio levada a cabo pela disciplina. Para tanto, o trabalho se estrutura em dois momentos principais. O primeiro apresenta a disciplina de maneira geral. O segundo, traz à tona temas abordados pelos alunos, revelando como resultado as tendências das perspectivas de se pensar a preservação do moderno
... "Being less bad is not being good," states William McDonough, even though energy is saved from the embodied energy, the existing building will still use electrical power, which substantially contributes to global warming and climate changes and therefore this issue must be considered. "Meeting sustainable energy targets will require substantially improving building envelope performance, upgrading the effectiveness of all energy consuming systems, and converting to renewable energy sources" (Elefante, 2007). However, each project, has to be treated differently and apply strategies that are most suitable to it. ...
... "The Greenest building is… one that is already built" states Carl Elefante (Elefante, 2007). Taking into account the massive investment of materials and energy in an existing building, resource management is successfully achieved when extending the building's useful service life. ...
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... The CE application concept can commence from the upstream to downstream building production, as shown in Figure 3. At the upstream level, building stakeholders need to consider the necessity of a new building, recognizing that the greenest are often those in existence (Elefante 2012). During construction, meticulous material usage planning and monitoring are essential to minimize waste (Zhang and Zhang 2023). ...
Building is a significant contributor to energy and material consumption. In tropical countries, the primary energy consumer in buildings is Air Conditioning (AC), driven by the cooling load from solar radiation. Interactive Kinetic Facade (IKF) can reduce building energy consumption by mitigating solar radiation. Furthermore, IKF has drawbacks in maintenance and disassembly. Therefore, this study proposed a Design for Disassembly (DfD) strategy that allows building components to easily disassemble for reuse. The objective of this study was to investigate the application of IKF with DfD strategy in the Engineering Center (EC) building facade. This study proposed a combination of on-site measurements, simulations, and calculations to comprehend the impact of IKF with DfD strategy implementation on energy consumption and material reusability. This research found that implementing IKF with the DfD strategy can significantly reduce solar radiation through building facade. The reduction can be indicated by a decrease of several parameters, Overall Thermal Transfer Value (OTTV) by 59%, annual operative temperature by 2.53°C and Energy Use Intensity (EUI) by 47.43%. In addition, the facade disassembly process is simpler with only 1 tool and 4 stages. This study could serve as a reference to improve energy efficiency and material reusability in building sector
... Abandoning demolition and replacing only 1% of Portland (USA) buildings within ten years would achieve 15% of the county's total CO 2 reduction targets. This study confirms the words of Carl Elefante [16] that 'the greenest building is one that is already built'. Hu and Swierzawski [17] also indicate the level of avoided environmental impacts thanks to adaptive reuse, using a historic school building as an example. ...
During the energy transition period and the increased supply of developed land, an analysis was conducted on the economic viability of transforming post-mining buildings. This study sought to answer the following questions: Does the circular economy create new conditions for adapting these specific industrial facilities? Should mining buildings be adapted or should they be demolished and built anew? The objectives of the article were to perform a comparative analysis (financial, environmental, and social) of these alternatives and to develop a decision-making model for managing obsolete mining facilities using circular economy principles. Decision-making regarding mining buildings should occur as part of revitalising post-mining areas. Consequently, the method used was research through design followed by comparative analyses: financial, environmental, and social. As a result, the study demonstrated the potential for adapting buildings on a defunct mining site, mainly compressor and fan stations. The financial, environmental, and social profitability of investing in the adaptive reuse of historic buildings was established. The entire process was encapsulated in a universal decision-making model. The analytical results presented in the article indicate that mining buildings represent a significant resource in a circular economy and their adaptation should be prioritised.
... Embodied carbon represents a significant share of existing buildings' contribution to global carbon emissions, with estimates of that contribution ranging from 25% to 75% of the total (International Energy Agency 2019; Pomponi and Moncaster 2016). Addressing this situation will require improvements to existing buildings' energy efficiency to reduce operational carbon, and finding ways to leverage or utilize buildings' embodied carbon as resources or for carbon sequestration (Elefante 2023;Lin et al. 2022;Gerfen 2020). For example, Far and Far (2019) suggest thermal-retrofit changes to the building envelope; Khadra et al. (2020) address modifications to installed HVAC systems; Paone and Bacher (2018) explore the potentials on occupant behavior changes; and Ruparathna et al. (2016) demonstrate the potential for such modifications to result in improved energy efficiency of existing buildings. ...
We describe a simple Rhino-based method for introducing embodied-carbon analysis in early design stages. The method produces visualizations comparing the relative quantity of materials, and estimates per-material weights to calculate the overall (simulated) weight of Rhino models. We position our method as a means of introducing architecture students to embodied-carbon concepts and digital modeling practices.
... Afinal, a sociedade começa a cair para um ciclo de demolir e reconstruir -já que uma grande parte dos espaços urbanos já está ocupada -e mesmo que se busque projetar e concretizar edificações "sustentáveis", não é possível fazer isso com-ISSN 2238-5436 pletamente sem impacto ao meio ambiente. E, assim, propõe-se restaurar e adaptar prédios existentes a novos usos, de forma sustentável, em vez de fazer novas construções "sustentáveis" (Elefante, 2007). ...
Este artigo pretende explorar a interseção entre arquitetura e a museologia como agentes na preservação da arquitetura, com foco nas construções do século XX, que vêm enfrentando dificuldades de conservação. A partir desta problemática apresenta-se como parte da resolução a proposta de criação de um museu itinerante que resgata o "olhar ao redor" ao cotidiano do pedestre, tendo como pano de fundo a cidade de Brasília. Para chegar a esta proposta são revisitados os conceitos de museu, itinerância e é apresentada como objeto chave a arquitetura local do cotidiano. Em seguida, ressalta-se a importância de ações como a do museu itinerante, ao contextualizar sua posição em questões como preservação, educação patrimonial e sustentabilidade para então materializar o projeto em si.
... This leads some to believe that historic structures should be demolished and replaced. However, this notion is often inaccurate, and an alternative perspective suggests that the greenest building is one that already exists [55]. ...
Africa is currently undergoing rapid urbanization, which has placed a significant strain on its already insufficient infrastructure. Many cities struggle to meet the needs of their residents through sustainable urban development. This has put urban Africa to a pressing dilemma: the tension between preserving historic buildings and sites, and the drive to modernize and redevelop cities. Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, exemplifies this struggle, as it is currently undergoing a rapid urban transformation underpinned by an urban renewal and infrastructure development project, which has included the demolition of historic buildings in its oldest district, Piazza. This article uses Addis Ababa as a case study to demonstrate how historic preservation can be integrated into urban development strategies. It utilizes Zerrudo’s methodology for historic preservation, encompassing the following four phases: awareness, appreciation, protection, and utilization. It further integrates Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology throughout each phase, enhancing the precision and effectiveness of preservation efforts. It argues that historic preservation not only safeguards cultural identity and heritage, but also brings significant economic benefits, including tourism and job creation. This integrated approach ensures that development and preservation are not mutually exclusive, but rather are complementary aspects of sustainable urban development in Africa.
... Even considering only impacts, both the AHD and ACD lack space and attention to many meanings and experiences of loss that come from impacts (69). They also obscure connections as diverse as use of archaeological data in climate models (7) and roles of historic buildings in holding carbon and improving energy efficiency (70,71). ...
The U.S. federal government is unbalanced in its capacity to recognize, manage, and engage cultural heritage as part of its response to climate change. Legislation from the 1906 Antiquities Act to Executive Order (EO) 13990 signed in 2021 has set an overarching approach in which heritage is understood to be primarily tangible places and things that should be conserved, foremost through monument and park boundaries and significance designations. Such conservation, however, does not protect heritage from impacts of climate change and how to manage these components of heritage is nearly invisible in recent climate-focused publications of the two agencies assigned by legislation to serve as leads for cultural heritage in the U.S. government. Yet further, the long-standing tangible approach to heritage does not incorporate emerging understandings of its intangible components and the diverse connections of all forms of heritage to place, meaning, identity, and global change goals of sustainability and equity. In contrast, analysis of 27 federal agency climate adaptation plans prepared in response to 2021 EO 14008 shows that multiple agencies not assigned lead roles for heritage recognize a range of responsibilities that include heritage as part of climate adaptation, mitigation, equity, and coordination with Indigenous communities. This paper explores U.S. heritage legislative history, the definition it helped create for heritage, more recent understandings of heritage, and relationships of these to climate change and how these are represented in climate work and plans across U.S. federal agencies. On these bases, recommendations are provided for research and policy steps.
... Studies on specific buildings and meta-analyses reveal considerable decreases in energy usage, as well as in the use of materials, fossil fuels, fresh water use, and emissions of carbon dioxide and other GHG. The environmental benefits of adaptively reusing old structures have been supported by several studies (Assefa and Ambler, 2017;Baker et al., 2017;Bullen and Love, 2010;Elefante, 2007;Kubbinga et al., 2017;Munarim and Ghisi, 2016;Thornton, 2011). Adaptive reuse is the process of locating, purchasing, refurbishing, and reusing a building or other comparable structure for a use other than the one for which it was first intended. ...
... "The most environmentally benign building is the one that need not be built because it already exists" (Elefante 2007;Grammenos and Russel 1997). Existing buildings are a sustainable source to maximize the use of embodied energy and building materials; hence reuse of these buildings allows for a low-carbon economy (Abubakar and Bununu 2020;Foster and Kreinin 2020). ...
Urban metabolism (UM) is the sum of processes for which cities mobilize, consume, and transform their resources for built environments to function effectively. It consists of interrelated processes working at various urban levels forming an intricate socio-environmental network to achieve urban sustainability, including adaptive reuse of heritage buildings. As significant components of historic urban areas, heritage buildings are adapted for appropriate functions to prolong their lifespans. This standard practice is an ideal solution for reducing adverse environmental impacts of the construction industry given that new buildings consume energy and resources and have large carbon footprints. Moreover, the adaptive reuse of heritage buildings increases socio-cultural viability and promotes eco-friendly environments. This practice of rehabilitation and reuse has been studied vastly. However, the relationship between urban metabolism and heritage buildings from an ecological perspective has not largely gained scholarly attention. Hence, this chapter explores this relationship by advocating that reuse and conservation are ecological principles, and that adopting existing infrastructure such as historical buildings and increasing their life cycles contributes toward desirable urban metabolism. This brings down cost and time of construction, requires less resources, retains a set of materials for longer periods for metabolic processes, and promotes environmental and social sustainability. The chapter reviews relevant literature and specific adaptive reuse case studies in urban areas around the globe including restoration and redevelopment of singular or multiple heritage buildings that display significant positive environmental impacts such as addressing resource depletion and reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The chapter also highlights the ecological aspect of a built environment concerning sustainable supply of materials and energy required for a desired urban metabolism. Based on this, the research builds a case for conservation and adaptive reuse to be employed as an important indicator for urban metabolism through maintenance and management of historical urban built environments.KeywordsAdaptive reuseEcological wisdomHistoric urban areasSocialEconomicAnd environmental indicatorsUrban metabolism
... On the other hand, sympathetic and respectful retrofits can also help preserve historic buildings from neglect and demolition as fabric or service improvements allow them to serve their communities for a longer time (Aigwi et al., 2018;Baker et al., 2021). Moreover, as the Carl Elefante quote stated "the greenest building is the one that is already built" (Elefante, 2007) reinforcing the potential of energy savings if historic buildings are maintained compared to building new. However, an inefficient historic building without any energy improvements compared to an efficient new building, over their whole life cycle would still be responsible for more emissions (Berg & Fuglseth, 2018), hence the importance of sympathetic energy renovations. ...
... In addition, the content of cluster #7 modern challenge illustrates that people are starting to realize that retrofitting existing buildings is also a research point that cannot only focus on building new structures. How to transform existing buildings into sustainable buildings through IoT sensors will also be a popular research direction in the future, because, as Carl Elefante says [110], the most environmentally friendly building is the one that already exists, and any new construction will, to a greater or lesser extent, result in a waste of new resources. Pavon et al. [111] have proved through a case that BIM combined with IoT and FM can transform existing buildings to be more intelligent and sustainable at a low cost, so how to make existing buildings more sustainable deserves more attention. ...
Sustainable development, which has become the priority study of architectural design, is receiving increasing attention with global climate change. At the same time, the building industry is urgently changing towards intelligent and digitalized tendencies. As a result, Building Information Modeling (BIM) and the Internet of Things (IoT) make crucial contributions to the transforming process. However, there is little knowledge of the integration of BIM–IoT in sustainable building from a macro perspective. Moreover, most existing research adopts a literature review method and lacks objective quantitative analysis. Few papers use bibliometric analysis to study the respective BIM and IoT research fields. Furthermore, few studies use Citespace software tools to analyze the integrated application of BIM–IoT. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the research frontiers and knowledge structure in BIM–IoT integration and the relationship between BIM-IoT and sustainable building and explore the research hotspots, trends, and future research directions. A quick and objective method was proposed to understand the research status of these new and rapidly developing fields. This paper uses topic search in the web of science core collection to obtain relevant literature and then uses Citespace for bibliometric analysis based on the literature review. Controlled terms and subject terms statistics from the Engineering Index core database search results are also used to briefly examine the fields’ research frontiers and hotspots as obtained from Citespace. The results show that: (1) The research on BIM–IoT integration focuses on building intelligence with BIM as the basis of application, and research on BIM–IoT integration within the field of sustainable building is currently focused on the first three phases of the life cycle. (2) The development of sustainable buildings needs to be considered on its human and social dimensions. BIM provides a platform for sharing information and communication among stakeholders involved in the building’s entire life cycle. At the same time, IoT allows occupants to better participate in buildings’ sustainable design and decision making. (3) In the future, more emerging technologies such as cloud computing and big data are required to better promote sustainable buildings and thus realize the construction of sustainable smart cities. At the same time, researchers should also pay attention to the sustainable transformation of existing buildings.
... (11) Advantages of AR AR has a main goal, which can be reached through two secondary goals. According to Jacobs (1993) and Elefante (2012), the greenest buildings are those that we already have. Conejos et al. (2013) also agree with them by saying the AR of existing buildings is one of the most sustainable design practices. ...
Purpose
This paper aims to shed light on adaptive reuse in traditional architecture (TA) in Erbil, Iraq.
Design/methodology/approach
An inductive approach and qualitative method were used in this study. The inductive research approach was used because there was no clear image of adaptive reuse in traditional cafés (TCs) in Erbil. Besides, there are no studies of TCs in Erbil particularly. Thus, there is a lack of knowledge about what adaptations took place in TCs in Erbil. The qualitative method extracted themes and issues from case studies of four TCs in Erbil citadel's buffer zone. This included a physical survey and observation of the TCs in Erbil and 18 semi-structured interviews with the owners, servers and visitors.
Findings
The analysis shows the flexibility of the TCs in Erbil as a face of adaptive re-use (AR) which is explained through the capacity linked to space modifications, the addition of modern devices, the function linked to space modifications, service addition, the condition linked to space modifications and the addition of modern devices. Also, TCs in Erbil has a spatial identity and architectural value that proves it is worthy enough to be preserved through unique spirituality linked to preserving the place.
Research limitations/implications
The findings are limited to the cases of TCs in mountain regain and may not be applicable or appropriate to other cafés in other different countries.
Originality/value
There are three aspects of authenticity in the current research. Firstly, the TCs in Erbil have not been studied before. Secondly, TCs that have been discovered have made AR of themselves whilst maintaining their original function-serving beverages, to stimulate creativity. Thirdly, most of the studies of AR have dealt with historical and heritage architecture, whilst the current research paper is dealing with TA.
... Traditional buildings are not merely a testimony of a past that needs to be protected but they can contribute actively to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement, the international treaty on climate change adopted in 2015. As pointed out in C. Elefante's famous sentence "the greenest building is….one that is already built" (Elefante, 2012), existing heritage has a lot to offer to current discussion on sustainability. Preservation of existing building stock and its refurbishment can achieve the goal of reducing the carbon footprint generated by the building sector, provided that accurate evaluations are conducted. ...
Restoration of built heritage can serve not only to preserve historical documents of the past but also to provide models for new sustainable architecture. Vernacular and, more generally, historic architecture is by its nature sustainabile and resilient. It is largely the result of experience and acquired knowledge, and shows how local resources can be used in a thoughtful and rational way in new construction. For this reason, it can inspire low-energy solutions necessary to address the current climate crisis. Conservation projects, in their turn, allow us to analyze the fabric of historic buildings, to understand which materials were used, how they were transformed and assembled, and how they offered the best response to the needs of use and resistance to the elements and natural hazards. In this paper, conservation of traditionaly-built architecture and new sustainable architecture are discussed as two partners pursuing the common goal of reducing the effects of climate change. The author investigates the way conservation and analysis of historic buildings allows us to interpret the complex and articulated reality of regional architecture. By retrieving the analysis of historic construction as a fundamental component for understanding architecture and adopting manual graphic records as a tool for expressing the complexity of the fabric of a building, it is possible to identify local building traditions and inspire new sustainable architecture.
... Several interesting examples have supported the adaptive reuse of historical buildings as a better alternative to demolition and reconstruction. These examples include strengthening the overall sense of place of a community by linking the community's past to its future ; maintaining the shared identity of a place (Geraedts et al., 2018); minimising overall construction time and costs (Douglas, 2006); attracting investments through commercially viable new use ; contributing towards mitigating the impacts of global climate change (Elefante, 2012); and supporting seismic resilience and sustainable inner-city regeneration of provincial cities with abundant underutilised historical buildings (Aigwi et al., 2018). ...
Currently trending as a practical approach to promote urban and seismic resilience, the adaptive reuse of historical buildings relies on expertise from various professional backgrounds ranging from conservation, urban planning, construction management, architecture, engineering to interior design. This paper explores the applicability of a performance-based multiple criteria decision assessment (MCDA) framework to prioritise underutilised historical buildings for adaptive reuse in Auckland, New Zealand while balancing the diverse interest of all relevant stakeholders.
A focus group workshop was conducted for relevant adaptive stakeholders in Auckland, New Zealand, to test the applicability of the performance-based MCDA framework developed by Aigwi et al. (2020) and prioritise four underutilised historical building alternatives for adaptive reuse interventions in Auckland, New Zealand.
Findings from this study revealed the significant potentials of the performance-based MCDA framework, both as an evidence-based measurement tool to prioritise underutilised earthquake-prone historical buildings in Auckland's central business district and as an effective decision-making strategy. Also, the framework allowed the inclusion of diverse stakeholders through the integration of collaborative rationality, ensuring consistency and transparency in the decision-making process.
The successful validation of the existing performance-based MCDA framework in Auckland, New Zealand, using multiple historical building alternatives, further strengthens its preceding validation by Aigwi et al. (2019) using only two historical buildings in Whanganui, New Zealand. The findings provide a theoretical platform for urban planning researchers to advance performance-based planning for adaptive reuse to other locations and fields. There are also interesting implications for local councils, heritage agencies, architects, urban planners, policymakers, building owners and developers in Auckland, New Zealand, as a guide to improving their understandings of: (1) the intangible values of optimal historical buildings perceived by the community as worthy of protection through adaptive reuse; and (2) the targeted needs of communities in the new functions of an optimal alternative from a group of representative historical building alternatives.
... Adaptive reuse is considered a valuable approach to reactivate and reuse disused or abandoned buildings, sites, or areas giving them a new purpose useful to the society [6,8,15,18]. The reuse of this heritage has a positive impact on urban sprawl and land consumption [19], in addition to being defined as an effective and environmentally responsible approach [6,20,21] it also acts with a great impact on cities and territory from an economic and social point of view [22][23][24]. In this sense, being a form of sustainable regeneration that extends the life of the existing heritage, its key role in the concept of CE within the construction sector is evident [23][24][25][26][27]. ...
This paper explores the enhancement of adaptive reuse (AR) of buildings through the lens of the sustainability protocols within the context of circular economy (CE) in Italy. Cities and the built environment can play a key role in the transition to a CE, especially considering the documented negative global impact due to resource consumption and waste generation. This is recognised among the principles of circularity defined by the European Commission towards a general strategy for a sustainable built environment, which encourages initiatives of building reuse and land consumption reduction. It has been proven that the AR of vacant buildings can bring environmental, social, and economic benefits towards an urban strategy based on CE principles by generating useful values to support innovative development dynamics. In this perspective, the sustainability protocols can be identified as useful tools to pursue strategies for spreading the culture of sustainable build environment. Considering the huge vacant Italian architectural heritage, this paper aims to analyze how the most widely used sustainability protocols in the Italian context currently address the enhancement of the reuse of buildings, to improve environmental, social, and economic quality in the built environment. We discuss the results highlighting how and which sustainability protocols better intercept these issues, providing grounds for future development.
... In adaptive reuse processes, the reuse of an existing building, area, or infrastructure for new and different needs through minimal redevelopment and recovery interventions [9,10] can create new opportunities and dynamics of the urban circular economy [11][12][13], from "waste places" to "catalyst places" for new opportunities, while producing multidimensional benefits (cultural, economic, environmental, and social), benefits deriving from the recovery of the produced capital, but, above all, to those deriving from the enhancement of the human capital involved [14,15]. In implementing the sustainable development goals according to circular economy models, the adaptive reuse of existing public heritage, both historical and recent, in addition to reducing urban sprawl [16,17], preserves historic buildings from obsolescence, and at the same time the economic and social dynamism effects for cities and territories are significant. The social component plays a fundamental role, as the challenge of recapturing abandoned iconic local spaces can mobilize urban communities with voluntary social initiatives in favor of the reuse of heritage [14,18,19] Currently, abandoned, underutilized, and unused public assets represent a cost for the Public Administration (PA), but as a common good represents an important resource for the territory and the community [9,10], both for the value itself and for the potential multidimensional effects that its enhancement can generate from the cultural, economic, social, and environmental points of view [18]. ...
The purpose of this research is to illustrate, through a case study, a multilevel decision-making process able to support the decision maker in optimizing investment choices for the efficient allocation of public resources, with specific reference to recovery and adaptation to the reuse of unused historical public heritage. During the evaluation process, two methods in particular were combined according to a multiphase design: (i) a multi-criteria analysis to identify the highest and best use among alternative reuse scenarios and (ii) a discounted cash flow analysis to support verification of the financial feasibility of the investment, in the hypothesis of an enhancement concession in a public–private partnership. Each method was applied in parallel to the evolution of the different design scenarios. The results of the study show that hybrid approaches are a promising line of research in the field of evaluation and urban design, applied to cultural heritage.
... Appealing to instinctive sentiment for historic buildings amongst preservation architects, Elefante (2007) argued that "the Greenest building is . . . one that is already built" in 2007. ...
After over a century of service, many Carnegie library buildings
in Britain are at risk, often condemned for presumed poor
energy performance with heritage protection perceived as
a further burden to negotiate. Although most now have heritage
status, saving them from demolition, demands to meet
changing agendas for efficiency mean that increasingly these
buildings are being sold and re-used. A more nuanced reading
of measures of performance is necessary. By interrogating
operational data in context and establishing indicators for lifecycle
analysis, this paper aims to offer generalizable steps to
justify their continued service in promoting wellbeing.
... The unification of preservation and sustainability concepts have recently created a global movement regarding the idea of energy conservation in existing buildings. A common saying in the green building movement states that "the greenest building is the one that is already built" (Elefante 2012). The idea of energy savings in buildings is not, in fact, novel. ...
Historic buildings have originally embodied sustainable features. These features responded to the microclimate and site where the building is located. However, with climate change and urban density, active techniques become essential to ensure occupants' indoor comfort. In this regard, the present study attempts to examine and assess the sustainable retrofitting of a historic building in order to maximize energy efficiency without affecting its unique historic character. It also addresses the shortcomings in the literature by considering the cost variation among retrofitting strategies and cost reduction in terms of energy consumption. In this framework, a historic building located on Istanbul University was analyzed in the framework of the case study. The study evaluated the implementation of several retrofit techniques, active and passive, using the energy software DesignBuilder. The implemented retrofit strategies were subsequently evaluated in terms of life cycle cost (LCC), aiming to determine the most cost-optimal and energy-efficient solution. The resultant improvements in energy consumption can serve as a model for forthcoming historic retrofitting projects that take into consideration both economic feasibility and historic build-ings' values.
... Additionally, Carl Elefante, FAIA and president of the American Institute of Architects, says, "The greenest building is . . . one that is already built," as he has emphasized the importance of improving the existing building stock (Elefante, 2012). While this article is from over a decade ago, we knew that no amount of new green construction could get us to a more sustainable future if we ignore existing buildings. ...
The buildings in which we teach management and decision analysis are ideal labs for advancing sustainability in management education, experiential learning, and integrated performance measurement. Utilizing building-based learning and design competition, student teams can learn about aspects of sustainability while proposing investments into the spaces we spend over 90% of our time inside of buildings. Buildings on university campuses provide an opportunity to design and deliver hands-on assignments showing how the actions taken on an existing building can improve the overall health and performance of that building and its owners and occupants. Contributions of this study include a primer on how to develop and deliver building-based learning and demonstrating ways in which to integrate a social cost of carbon in investments with a proven approach to assess and measure the return on integration of financial, environmental, and human health and productivity in a return on integration, integrated rate of return, and integrated future value. Insights and the lessons learned provide linkages to learning outcomes and assessment so that learning objectives are aligned with and advance sustainability in management education and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals with outcomes generalizable to any building and business.
[Citation: Sroufe, R. (2020). Business Schools as Living Labs: Advancing Sustainability in Management Education. Journal of Management Education, 44(6), 726-765.]
... HULs planning interventions must be conceived as an integral part of the overall urban-management effort to bring socio-economic development and a better quality of life for the existing population. Shared-living in historic urban landscapes must be promoted not only to enhance stewardship and community management towards historic sites and buildings but also as part of a more sustainable approach, remembering Carl Elefante's [31] iconic phrase "The greenest building is the one that is already built". ...
The paper presents further steps of study started by authors in recent years, as part of the widest international research collaboration, which focuses on shared life and regeneration of abandonment of rural settlements as strategies for the development of sustainable territories. This research aims to understand how the regeneration of ancient community buildings impacts on the sustainable development of the local context. To understand these effects, the research considered four traditional typologies of community buildings, from different cultures: Tulou (China), Cascina (Italy), Hacienda (Mexico), and Marae (New Zealand). Among the tens/hundreds of contemporary regeneration interventions, three contemporary projects per each of these typologies have been selected. To assess the territorial impact of the projects a new approach has been defined using Expert Interviews as the methodology, so as to be able to have an assessment directly by experts in the fields of regenerative projects and sustainable development. The Expert Interviews were held based on a questionnaire that assessed the effects of the projects. For the evaluation of the projects, two categories of indicators have been selected: (1) United Nations SDGs, (2) architectural regeneration indicators generated by the study "The Role of Cultural Heritage in Sustainable Development: Multidimensional Indicators as Decision-Making Tool", by Francesca Nocca, published in Sustainability (2017, 9, 1882). The research outputs show how the urban-architectural regeneration of these historical typologies can be clearly associated with indications of sustainable development. The results also show that in all four cultures the regeneration of historic buildings provides many benefits to local communities by successfully mixing different income groups and the inclusion of marginalized or vulnerable groups.
The protection of cultural heritage in Slovenia is organised by the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia (IPCHS), and the Register of Protection Regimes is compiled by the Register of Immovable Cultural Heritage, which includes over 32,000 cultural heritage units. Entry in the register recognises the value of the listed building or site as cultural heritage and its classification as a cultural monument of local or national importance determines the way in which it is protected. A spatial analysis and review of the official national heritage register shows that the inscription of heritage buildings and sites often depends on the commitment of regional conservators, while the declaration of a cultural monument of local or national importance depends on political will, awareness and public engagement. Many areas with immovable cultural heritage also pose a major challenge for spatial planning. The balancing of needs and interests in spatial planning at all levels, but especially at the local level, often leads to conflicts and quick, unprofessional decisions. A particular problem is the systematic identification and monitoring of heritage at risk, which should ensure proactive role on more endangered but culturally valuable objects. As endangerment screening is not systematic at the national level and has only been carried out on a very limited scale, we developed a simple participatory mapping application in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture. As part of the study, we tested the application with geography students and students of ethnology and cultural anthropology at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, who visited and inventoried more than 1000 cultural heritage units. Through participatory mapping and cooperation between different disciplines, it is possible to record a larger number of cultural heritage units and identify critical areas/objects in poor condition more quickly and in a timely manner. We estimate that 10% of ICH in Slovenia is seriously at risk, which demands quick response with targeted protection, conservation and renovation.
The buildings and construction sector is responsible for 39% of CO2 emissions in the world which have a direct impact on climate change. To mitigate these effects of the sector, the existing building stock needs to be improved. One of the methods for improving the building stock is to enhance the physical properties of the building envelopes with building energy retrofits.
Turkey’s climate will gradually get warmer and drier with unstable precipitation with the effect of climate change. Furthermore, it is reported that the temperature increases in the summer period in the world between 2016-2100 will be higher than the increases in the winter period. Due to this trend, the importance of reducing the cooling loads of the buildings in the summer period is increasing.
The aim of this study is to show the effect of a series of building envelope interventions on the energy consumption of existing buildings located in different climates. The regions where the application example is located are Istanbul with temperate-humid and Diyarbakır with dry-hot climate, and the selected energy retrofit interventions are solar shading implementation, glass system replacement and phase change material application.
The thesis study consists of four chapters.
In the first chapter, the background of the subject is explained, the studies on the subject are evaluated, the aim, scope, methodology and hypotheses of the thesis are explained.
In the second chapter, the concepts and variables used in the thesis are explained.
In the third chapter, the specifications of the application example building are explained, the energy consumption of the base case of the building is calculated, the properties of the energy retrofit interventions are explained in detail, and the energy consumption of each intervention is shown.
In the fourth chapter, the results and discussions of the thesis study are presented.
The risks climate change poses to cultural heritage have garnered increased attention in recent decades, prompting reactions from organizations such as UNESCO and ICOMOS. While there is a consensus among heritage actors that the climate crisis requires a departure from ?business as usual?, there is no unanimity regarding which aspects of heritage protection should remain unchanged and which necessitate transformation, nor what level of action and transformation is required. Such disagreements may not always be immediately apparent, as different approaches are often mentioned within the same policy paper or call for action. They offer different interpretations of the climate crisis impacts, different framings of what is at stake, and different political visions regarding the necessary steps, thus creating tensions. This paper utilizes maximum variation sampling to identify and analyse groups of approaches through which climate change has been addressed within the cultural heritage field, ranging from technical protection to decolonisation. It highlights the significance of grasping their political and eco-social underpinnings, crucial for fostering transdisciplinary dialogues that draw upon the expertise of natural and social sciences, engineering, and humanities to alleviate tensions, jointly shape future actions, and develop sustainable solutions that respect and protect heritage while fostering regenerative socio-ecological relations.
In recent years, there has been a growing international governmental focus on the emergencies of climate change and biodiversity, in relation to the objectives of the Paris Agreement. There is a strict relationship between climate change and the city. All the activities that take place in an urban context contribute to climate change. In fact, a large amount of resources is consumed in cities with negative external effects in terms of pollutants and climate-altering emissions. In this scenario, the construction sector is considered one of the fields that contributes more to environmental depletion and climate change due to the continuous use of materials, energy and manufacturing technologies. Governments are striving to find new sustainability solutions and strategies both for the construction of new buildings and for the redevelopment/reuse of existing ones, including historic buildings. This contribution aims to identify strategies and tools for historic buildings renovation and energy retrofit to reach climate targets in the perspective of a more circular and sustainable building stock. A review of recent literature was developed to explore innovative materials and technologies that can be employed for energy retrofit of historic heritage buildings, including the analysis of exemplary case studies, taking into consideration the needed balance between cultural values conservation and climate change-related objectives. An abacus of suitable materials and technologies was developed and overall recommendations are proposed to enhance policies on historic buildings retrofit regulations.
Purpose
Residential buildings in Greece constitute an important portion of the existing building stock. Furthermore, most of these buildings were built prior to the first Thermal Insulation Code of 1981. The article focuses on existing, typical residences built after 1920, which are found mostly in suburban areas and settlements all around Greece. The purpose of the research is to evaluate the effect of simple bioclimatic interventions focused on the improvement of their diurnal, inter-seasonal and annual thermal performance.
Design/methodology/approach
The applied strategies include application of thermal insulation in the building shell and openings, passive solar systems for the heating period and shading and natural ventilation for the summer period. The effect of the strategies is analysed with the use of building energy analysis. The simulation method was selected because it provides the possibility of parametric analysis and comparisons for different proposals in different orientations.
Findings
The results show that the increased thermal mass of the construction is the most decisive parameter of the thermal behaviour throughout the year.
Research limitations/implications
The typical residences under investigation are often found in urban and/or suburban surroundings. These mostly refer to free-standing buildings situated, which, in many cases, do not have the disadvantages and limitations that the geometrical characteristics of densely built urban locations impose on incident solar radiation (e.g. overshadowing during the winter) and air circulation (e.g. reduce natural ventilation during the summer). Nevertheless, even in these cases, the surrounding built environment may also have relevant negative effects, which were not taken under consideration and could be included in further, future research that will include the effect of various orientations, as well as of neighbouring buildings.
Practical implications
Existing residences built prior to the first Thermal Insulation Code (1981) form an important part of the building stock. Consequently their energy upgrade could contribute to significant conventional energy savings for heating and cooling, along with the inter-seasonal improvement of interior thermal comfort conditions.
Social implications
The proposed interventions can improve thermal comfort conditions and lead to a reduction of energy consumption for heating and cooling, which is an important step against energy poverty and the on-going energy crisis.
Originality/value
The proposed interventions only involve the building envelope and are simple with relatively low cost.
Deconstruction—the systematic disassembly of reusable and recyclable components and materials—is being actively promoted in a growing number of US cities to reduce the enormous amount of construction demolition waste sent to landfill. Research has highlighted local and regionally specific criteria influencing the decision on deconstruction, but it remains unclear how to decide which city-owned condemned properties in Pittsburgh should be considered for the new deconstruction pilot program. Therefore, this study establishes a prioritization model to distinguish the relative importance of factors using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). According to local experts, the four most impactful criteria are the environmental impact, economic impact, resources and type of properties. Fourteen factors within these criteria are selected for detailed comparison. The relative importance of these factors is then used to weight spatial map overlays to classify condemned properties into four deconstruction value categories. As a result, this study offers a new methodology to evaluate potential deconstruction projects by weighting the criteria most valued by decision-makers in Pittsburgh, which could be altered and expanded to fit the values of other cities. Practice relevance A robust decision-making process involving experts, local stakeholders and city officials is created for the selection of buildings to be deconstructed rather than demolished. The decision process is based on a comprehensive analysis of environmental, economic, resource and building-type criteria. A clear process is also established for the identification of the advantages and limitations of the approach. This provides a prioritization of potential deconstruction locations based on experts’ subjective judgements and an objective dataset, concluding that the highest value of deconstruction should be first considered by decision-makers. This pilot project provides a proof of concept of the group decision-making process. City-owned condemned buildings in Pittsburgh were divided into four categories with different deconstruction values by the combination of AHP and geographic information systems (GIS) analysis. The relationship and consistency between the condemned properties in each category and the deconstruction value are considered in detail.
Buildings represent the identity of cities and create the memory of the nation. Architecture landmark are the ambassadors of culture and civilization of the country. The UAE modern heritage represented in the 60s, 70s, and 80s architecture signifies the memory of the country and highlights the architecture style and its influences in various periods. The national theatre of Abu Dhabi is a key landmark from the 70s era. This cultural symbol is a landmark that shaped the style of the capital city at this time. This paper is a case study that aims at understanding the architecture of the National Theatre of Abu Dhabi building as a symbol of architecture and the architect’s only building remaining in the region. The paper outcomes and findings represent an approach for evaluating and greening modern heritage buildings in the Middle East while protecting both their historical and cultural values. The research aims to provide architects, researchers, and decision makers with a capture of architectural heritage buildings documentation via BIM modelling and traditional methods.
In the context of worldwide efforts towards energy efficiency and circular economy, embodied energy has been increasing its weight in the total lifecycle energy use of buildings. By investigating the context and the extent to which it is crucial to calculate embodied energy quantities for existing buildings, this paper investigates the concept itself of embodied energy in existing buildings as a still untapped potential for driving sustainable renovation and reuse of urban environments.
A new research gap emerges from a critical literature review. A new comprehensive approach for definition and calculation of embodied energy that integrates both retroactive and prospective perspectives is proposed within two boundary systems expressed in terms of life-cycle energy analysis, revealing the potential role of embodied energy in supporting decision at city-level regarding adaptive reuse or demolish-rebuild scenarios on buildings as part of urban heritage. Results investigates the extent to which embodied energy stored in our urban heritage should be considered as a decision parameter to prioritize preservation and reuse interventions among the large number of existing buildings composing the present and the future built environment, delineating new open issues for further research.
Buildings are responsible for 38% of all global CO2 emissions: the responsibility of architectural educators to prepare future architects for this reality demands radical action. Considering the tendency of architectural practice and education to pursue an abstractive relationship to the non-human environment, this chapter explores a lineage of three first-wave architectural ecopedagogies: Arcosanti, the Women’s School of Planning and Architecture, and the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales. It uses these three very different endeavours to speculate about the need for radical responses to the climate emergency and about the challenges that will be faced by emergent second-wave architectural ecopedagogies.
This chapter charts some genealogies, challenges, and directions for experimenting with the utopic postdigital ecopedagogies demanded by our present (post)pandemic reality. These are messianic—rather than prophetic—utopias that exist not as proclamations or programmes for a distant future but as potentialities immanent in the irreducible excess of the present. While their roots most clearly emanate from the Freirean-inspired ecopedagogy movement, we conceptualize ecopedagogies instead as educational forms that emerge from, negotiate, debate, produce, resist, and/or overcome the shifting and expansive postdigital ecosystems from and to which we write and think. These are expansive ecosystems of humans, postdigital machines, nonhuman animals, minerals, objects, and more; ecosystems that are overdetermined by new forms of ontological hierarchies and capitalism, imperialism, and settler-colonialism. By charting some of the potential lineages, directions, contradictions, and challenges—and by proposing potential lines of educational praxis—we lay a basis for reinvigorated fields of inquiry that moves beyond the existing postdigital literature on the current pandemic.KeywordsPostdigitalCritical pedagogyEcopedagogyUtopíaEnvironmentFeminismQueer theoryDataAlgorithmsIntersectionalityBioinformational capitalismViral ModernityAestheticsImperialismCritical disability studiesBeliefScience and technology studies
We are living in rapidly changing times where the world is running low on its carbon budget in trying to rapidly transition to net zero. We are also living amidst transformations, innovation, and operational modernization to be able to provide for a Smart City, including climate health. Future smart cities demand a balanced blend of data and technology to create diversely inclusive and sustainable solutions. In this chapter, the author focuses on how smart buildings can be designed for a sustainable future, exploring the possibilities of converting existing buildings into interoperable spaces, powered by technology and data. While the author outlines the differences between brownfield and greenfield smart buildings, he makes a case for each and explains their potential in achieving productive sustainability. The chapter delineates some of the policy implementations required to align smart buildings with sustainable climate action and substantiates global practices with ROI data. The author concludes the chapter by offering the way forward in the urban sustainability journey.
This review contributes to the debate regarding feedback needed by architects and building designers to improve the sustainability of their building designs. It utilizes the Integral Sustainable Design framework to harness a more comprehensive definition of sustainability to examine the breadth of currently possible feedback to building designers. The review acknowledges the multiple stakeholders that partake in different stages of a building project and focusses specifically on feedback from completed buildings for architects and designers. This review has endeavoured to summarize the range of current feedback which may be available to architects and draw conclusions regarding the usefulness of some of the assessment methods. There are some aspects of sustainability that have well developed and agreed feedback measures, such as energy use, embodied energy, and Indoor Air Quality. Other aspects about which there has been some research but no agreement on feedback include feeling safe, ecosystem services, and inclusiveness. This review reveals important feedback aspects not covered by either research, sustainability ratings schemes or post occupancy evaluation methods. Indeed, there are many aspects of the sustainability of school buildings about which very little is known, such as physical externalities and community services and the building's effect on socialisation and sense of place. Direct feedback in these areas will increase the pace of sustainability improvement in school design. However, further research is required to determine aspects about which architects desire feedback would find most useful and to develop efficient feedback methods. t.
The subject of the article covers analyses of the methods and effects of architectural and conservation education at the university level on the basis of the research results of the Erasmus+ SURE project and our own experience in creating and implementing conservation curricula at the Faculty of Architecture of Wroclaw University of Science and Technology. The observations concerning the works sent to the Professor Jan Zachwatowicz International Competition (ICOMOS Poland), in which master's diploma projects on the protection and restoration of architectural monuments were evaluated, were presented as a comparative material. It is a place of confrontation of the effects of teaching in the majors of architecture and heritage conservation, which shows differences in systems and methods of teaching at universities. This made it possible to draw conclusions regarding education in the specialization of architecture and urban planning as well as to outline necessary program changes, some of which were successfully implemented in Poland in 2020, by introducing a new core curriculum.
Adaptive reuse, the repurposing of buildings for new uses, is an age-old practice designed to reimagine, remake and revitalize local economies, cities and communities. In more recent decades, reuse has become part of a systematic process of contemporary city building and a globalized practice of placemaking. As such adaptive reuse is much more that a technical or practical application but is rather a complex process that engages with and transforms the social, cultural and spatial dynamics of cities and their communities around the world. This article focuses on the contemporary geographies of adaptive reuse and highlights three key themes: reuse in the post-industrial city, reuse on the ‘edges’ and ‘peripheries’ of the global built environment, and reuse as part of the global sustainability discourse. Overall, this review highlights the rich and growing research across urban, cultural and environmental geography and exposes a number of ways in which this process operates as a powerful tool in shaping local and regional contexts.
During the last decades, the sustainable redesign of existing buildings has been gaining importance in both architectural practice and education. While based on the knowledge of the basic principles of bioclimatic design, it also requires a quantitative evaluation of the buildings’ energy performance. This article aims at presenting the set-up, methodology and results of an undergraduate architectural technology course, which attempts to educate students on assessing the thermal characteristics and bioclimatic performance of existing buildings, proposing low-tech and low-cost interventions, and quantitatively evaluating their effect using energy simulation software. The applied strategies include thermal insulation, shading combined with natural ventilation for the summer period and their effect on the improvement of diurnal, inter-seasonal and annual thermal performance is evaluated. The results involve the assessment of the course set-up, the evolution during the five-year period that it has been taught, the teaching outcome, as well as the future progress and possible alterations.
Working and researching in the built environment requires an interdisciplinary approach. A continual challenge is how to collaborate not only within one’s discipline, but also with other disciplines. Historic preservation, as one of the newest arrivals to the built environment disciplines, is challenged with a unique set of circumstances that render its researchers and practitioners at a disadvantage compared to architecture, landscape architecture, planning, and construction science. As there is no overall organization that exclusively represents the preservation professional or academic, historic preservation tends to be a minority player in collaborative efforts with the other disciplines in the built environment. This paper will discuss the challenges to collaboration, focusing on foundational, internal, and external attributes that work in an antagonistic or synergistic manner to impede or facilitate partnering, teamwork, and mutual benefit. Several solutions are recommended, including the need to have historic preservation sit at the table of the built environment disciplines as an equal partner.
Purpose
This paper aims to explore how adaptive re-use (AR) could be used more frequently and extensively in the hospitality industry as a viable strategy to help achieve the United Nations sustainable development goals (UN SDGs) agenda for 2030. In particular, the paper discusses the benefits and drawbacks of AR and further investigates the appeal of AR over rebuilding, in both a general sense and specific to hospitality settings.
Design/methodology/approach
The study provides a literature review and thematic analysis based on semi-structured interviews about AR projects and its application in hospitality settings. In so doing, the article draws on knowledge and insights from experts and practitioners involved in AR projects globally. The professional interviewees’ expertize ranges from urban planning, sustainable development, architecture to sustainable hospitality solutions.
Findings
The results illustrate how AR is a mindset not only applicable to specific buildings or environments but also how it is a vital solution to sustainable development in hospitality. The social, environmental and economic benefits of AR outweigh the challenges and extend to being of regional and even national importance.
Practical implications
AR projects have the ability to stimulate improvement in the use of space and to transform entire communities – especially if there is more and improved support from local government and the relevant authorities. With sufficient incentives to make the projects economically viable, the outcome would be increased presence of cultural and historic preservation, more conservation of construction materials, energy and other resources relevant to the demolition and construction process. The application of AR contributes to attaining UN SDGs’ targets and the future will see more culturally rich, inclusive, sustainable cities and architecture.
Originality/value
There seems to be a lack of research in the field of AR in the hospitality context, particularly in relation to achieving the UN SDGs 2030. This paper aims to bridge this gap in knowledge, as well as to provide a starting point for a greater vision and coordination between governments, architects, hospitality professionals and all other involved stakeholders to boost sustainable development through AR.
This paper is the first in-depth review of the state of the art of environmental impact indicators for adaptive reuse of cultural heritage (ARCH) buildings from a circular economy perspective. Buildings are a necessary component of sustainability planning because they are significant consumers of natural resources, producers of construction and demolition waste, and contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, buildings, particularly ARCH buildings, are long lasting; therefore, measuring and managing their environmental impacts is crucial to achieving the universal vision of a sustainable, low-carbon economy. The research answers the questions, 'What are the environmental impact indicators used by individual ARCH building project analyses?' and 'Are the most commonly used indicators reflecting Circular Economy concepts?' It synthesizes and defines current practice in the field whilst highlighting the gaps between practice and policy. Although the term 'Circular Economy' is not explicitly and routinely used in the literature, related concepts such as life cycle analysis, energy consumption reduction, energy efficiency, and embodied carbon/energy are evident at the project level. Concrete and measured environmental indicators are not mainstream. However, narratives of environmental protection feature prominently in the literature, indicating an environmental motivation for repurposing cultural heritage buildings. Further, there is a gap between common indicators of circularity and the ARCH building project level indicators shown in the dataset.
The architectural design and environmental treatments have shown a large impact on environmental indoor performance and energy efficiency of buildings. Designers have been working on more efficient buildings using tools like the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) which is developed within the US Green Building Council (USGBC). This research aims to emphasize the passive design aspects of Islamic buildings in Historic Cairo, with special focus
on Bayt Al-Suhaymi. Passive design elements such as architectural design aspects, orientation, fac¸ade treatments, selected materials and their impact on the energy efficiency levels are investigated in the research. Measurements of environmental indoor performance levels are carried out within the building where the temperature variance, humidity changes, TVOC and CO2 particles number are considered in a pilot survey. These measurements are employed in the assessment of the indoor environmental quality. Additionally, the building is assessed with reference to all other LEED criteria such as transportation, sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy, materials and innovation. LEED assessment revealed that Bayt Al-Suhaymi as an Islamic historic building could comply with the LEED rating system and could be a candidate to receive LEED gold certification.
Buildings are a major consumer of natural resources, potable water & energy and contribute to about 30% of the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Therefore, a major reduction in global GHG is not achievable without a significant decrease in contributions from buildings. This paper examines sustainable/green design of structural components of concrete buildings based on the available metrics of cost, carbon footprint, lifetime energy requirements and available credits in LEED v4. The current version of LEED rating system (i.e. v4) has significant differences from the earlier versions. It is imperative that the structural engineers are aware of these changes and how to incorporate the new requirements in the structural design for achieving the maximum number of rating points. LEED v4 introduces many concepts that are new to a structural engineer. For example: Environmental Product Declaration (EPD), Product Category Rules (PCR), Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), embodied, operating and total energy etc. The paper attempts to clarify these concepts by explanation and examples. Nations are rightly proud to show off their prosperity through the quantity and quality of their buildings and civil infrastructure assets. However, buildings are a major consumer of natural resources, potable water and energy and contributor of about 30% of the global GHG emissions. It was realized that a major reduction in global GHG is not achievable without a significant decrease in contributions from the building sector (UNEP, 2009). It is estimated that by 2050, the existing built-up areas in the world will be more than tripled and exposure to natural calamities and hazards will increase by more than five folds. Therefore, it is prudent that new structures are built and communities are planned by taking into account sustainability (energy efficiency and prudent use of construction materials), adaptability and disaster prevention (resilience and robustness). This objective is not achievable without active participation of structural engineers who are one of the key players in the design and construction of any building or civil infrastructure project. This paper examines sustainable/green design of structural components of concrete buildings based on the available metrics of cost, carbon footprint, lifetime energy requirements and available credits in LEED v4 (USGBC, 2013). The current version of LEED rating system (i.e. v4) has significant differences from the earlier versions. It is imperative that the structural engineers are made aware of these changes and how to incorporate the new requirements in the structural design for achieving the maximum number of rating points as well as imparting a positive impact on the built environment. LEED v4 introduces many concepts that are new to a structural engineer. For example: Environmental Product Declaration (EPD), Product Category Rules (PCR), Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCA), embodied, operating and total energy etc. The paper attempts to clarify these concepts by explanation and examples.
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