BUILD UP

Historic buildings can be considered as the symbol of European cities, towns and villages; entire districts are unique proof of European cultural heritage. Currently, about 35 % of the EU's buildings are over 50 years old and almost 75 % of the building stock is energy inefficient. The renovation of existing buildings has the potential to lead to significant energy savings, possibly reducing the EU’s total energy consumption by 5-6 % and lowering CO2 emissions by about 5 %.

Every month, BUILD UP highlights publications covering a specific topic. November’s Topic of the Month is: ‘Energy Efficiency Design tools’. The website is already available for contributions and BUILD UP’s editorial board is eager to receive your discussion papers, news and articles.

Comparable performance data from buildings that could be converted into information and useful knowledge would largely benefit key stakeholders in the building sector. The H2020 project ExcEED and its collaborative platform have turned this into reality. Users add their buildings’ monitoring data then the intelligence embedded in the platform turns raw data into key performance indicators and geo-clustered benchmarks, indicating where to focus to improve building efficiency.

Digital transformation of the AEC sector is facing several criticalities which must be solved. For instance, the lack of proper information management throughout the entire life cycle of construction works remains an important issue. In this context, the EU-funded BIM4EEB project is developing an attractive and powerful BIM-based toolkit. This BIM management system has been integrated with specific tools for fast mapping buildings, HVAC design, operation and management, and for fast-tracking renovation operations.

The project is restoring what was once known as one of the most magnificent Writer’s Palaces in Europe, a unique example of national romanticism in Latvia. A total budget of over EUR 5 million has been made available for the work, of which the European Regional Development Fund is contributing more than EUR 1.3 million.

Deep-energy renovations are a big step for small multi-apartment buildings. To better understand what drivers motivate property owners to carry out these projects, we visited Hardi Kolli, a co-owner of the Apartment Owners Association ‘Rannaliiva’, in Võru, Estonia. The Rannaliiva building is one of three EU-funded RenoZEB project sites where the co-owners have decided to carry out deep-energy renovation works.

This book explores how the concept of regeneration can – and is starting to be – explicitly applied to the design of cities and buildings. A ‘proactive’ design approach is proposed which seeks to integrate regenerative design principles into the concepts and workflows of practitioners, researchers and students.

The project idea arose from the need to create a structure to serve those visiting the beach on Elba’s Samson Island, among the 12 most beautiful beaches in Italy. This project, which began in 2017, is focusing on protecting the landscape in an area of natural beauty.

By taking a fresh approach to social housing, Lacaton & Vassal architects Frédéric Druot and Christophe Hutin have won the 2019 Mies van der Rohe Award for their transformation of 530 apartments in the Grand Parc Bordeaux project.

The HeLLo project is aiming to raise awareness and knowledge among professionals (architects, public administrations, superintendents, end-users) of the real potential of some retrofit solutions in interventions on historic buildings. The project intends to create a real experimental laboratory in which to test directly the performance of some insulating materials in an historical case study in order to acquire real data which will be useful for the design of such interventions.

Historic buildings make up a considerable part of our building stock. To save this heritage for future generations, we need to find conservation-compatible energy retrofit approaches and solutions. This project aims to develop a solid knowledge base on how to save energy by renovating historical and protected buildings in a cost-efficient way.

The Spara and bevara (Swedish for save and preserve) database contains bibliographic records on articles and books dealing with energy efficiency in historical buildings, alongside full-text documents and links to electronic resources.

EERAdata aims to accelerate implementation of the principle of energy efficiency first across Europe by supporting policymakers in effectively assessing the impacts of energy-efficiency investments. Initially, the project will focus on investments in buildings designed to achieve a highly energy efficient and decarbonised building stock.

In collaboration with BUILD UP, this webinar focused on how to use ENERFUND to identify energy non-efficient buildings. ENERFUND is a tool that rates and scores deep-renovation opportunities. It is based on a set of parameters, such as the Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) rating, year the building was constructed, the cost of retrofitting the said area, and others.

The features of this tool include enabling the calculation of the energy performance of a ventilation and air-conditioning system, according to the corresponding EPB standard, with a wide variety of choices regarding the components, technologies and operational settings of ventilation systems, using a control sheet with drop-down menus.

The Historic Building Atlas has collected examples of building renovation that are exemplary both in terms of heritage protection and energy efficiency. The database includes any building of historic and/or cultural value, independent of the level of protection, from medieval buildings to buildings from the 1920s and post-WWII architecture.

The CRAVEzero pinboard is a structured framework organising all the information and tools necessary to build reliable low life-cycle cost nZEBs. During the webinar, the main components will be demonstrated and explained to enable the participants to use the pinboard efficiently in their own work.

Climate change is already under way, which is why the FACADES19 event is dedicated to the topic ‘South challenges and beyond’. The programme covers a broad range of relevant topics with a great line-up of keynote speakers anticipated.

Policymakers and city practitioners will discuss and share lessons learnt from the Interreg ACE Retrofitting (Accelerating Condominium Energy Retrofitting) project around strategies and tools to overcome the legal, social and financial barriers of building improvements in condominiums.

The theme of SSPCR 2019 – unfolding in different thematic tracks which address specific topics – has the objective of providing participants with a comprehensive overview of recent and original work in the field and building up shared knowledge among researchers, professionals, decision-makers and civil society.