For decades, heritage buildings in Europe have been an example of resilience, providing historic examples of low emissions during operation, while providing an identifiable and unique character to the core of our cities, towns and villages. However, in many cases the techniques and technologies used for their construction and operation have been lost or replaced for other ones which reflect our current values and scientific developments, which in some cases are not compatible or replaceable with former methods. It is imperative to ensure conservation and maintenance of heritage buildings while providing the positive aspects of modernity which are also sought by occupants. This implies making them inclusive and accessible to populations with reduced mobility, affordable and easy to maintain, meet current comfort standards while having low or zero emissions, adapting them to a new social and energy model.
Herit4ages aims to demonstrate that it is possible to improve the overall energy and comfort performance of heritage buildings while preserving their architectural and cultural identity. Given that the spectrum of heritage buildings is very broad and that protection laws may allow for different levels of intervention, the project aims to develop a set of solutions that can be replicated in different parts of Europe for buildings that have heritage value but which still preserve a daily use, for example offices, educational buildings and residences. The concept seeks to solve the lack of comfort experienced in many heritage buildings as in many cases there is no modern heating/cooling system, or where implementing one entails a significant economic expense due to the need to condition large volumes. It also aims to help heritage buildings meet modern standards in terms of accessibility, inclusivity and thermal performance, increasing their attractiveness for existing and prospective users while preserving them.
The solutions are aimed to preserve the heritage character of the building while making higher use of renewable energy such as solar, use materials within the locality to improve their lifecycle, and future-proof heritage buildings by increasing their access to digital energy management systems which will make them able to avail of smart services such as preventive maintenance monitoring. They are being developed using an innovative co-creation methodology, which provides a novel method for the social acceptance of solutions and which will increase their widespread use.
The solutions include: heritage co-creation toolkit; clay-based panels to improve energy efficiency of walls, floors and ceilings; Heritage-centric building information management system with digital twin (HBIM); heritage-friendly green environmental sensor; non-intrusive energy management router to increase the use of heritage-appropriate photovoltaic panels.
The selected demonstration sites include a heritage lab for testing the solutions previous to intervention (Spain), a former monastery turned into a hotel (Spain), a modernist university building (Italy), a palace turned into offices (Estonia), and heritage residences turned into social housing (Portugal).
