Project description
Reviving Europe’s historic buildings for a sustainable future
Across Europe, 19th and 20th-century modern period buildings stand as the embodiment of our rich heritage. However, these architectural gems fall short in terms of heating and cooling efficiency, making their restoration a complex undertaking. In this context, the EU-funded SINCERE project will unlock the hidden potential of historic structures by optimising their carbon footprint and energy performance. To achieve this, the project harnesses innovative, sustainable restoration materials, energy harvesting technologies, ICT tools and socially innovative approaches. Overall, the project’s holistic approach spans from the materials used to the city scale. It tailors retrofitting solutions to the unique characteristics of each building while considering environmental factors and future climate scenarios.
Objective
Today, 19th and 20th c. modern period buildings are the trademark of numerous European cities, forming a great part of EU Built Heritage, reflecting and shaping the identity of our local, national and multinational societies. Considering that historic buildings are ineffective in terms of energy consumption for heating and cooling, among the biggest restoration and renovation challenges is to enhance the energy performance of historic buildings.
SINCERE aims to elucidate the values of Built Heritage and provide the tools for optimizing the carbon footprint and energy performance of historic buildings, towards the requirements of net-zero-carbon-buildings, by utilizing innovative, sustainable, and cost-effective restoration materials and practices, energy harvesting technologies, ICT tools and socially innovative approaches.
SINCERE adapts a multi-scale concept, from material-, to building-, to neighbourhood- to city-scale, applied on the three main parts of buildings: structure, external envelope (opaque), and transparent parts, implemented at different time-frames, in order to provide decision making tools to the stakeholders involved in the process, considering the full-service life of the buildings, including restoration, operation, monitoring and maintenance phases. Energy performance in terms of retrofitting materials and solutions will be optimized according to the buildings’ unique structural, architectural, functional and materials characteristics, their environmental setup, as well as local future climate change scenarios. SINCERE will provide a palette portfolio of sustainable restoration options that will be evaluated by H-BIM/H-DT tools in order to enable the selection of optimum solutions and the planning of necessary adaptation actions. SINCERE will also focus on raising awareness and empowering Europeans to promote the concept of preservation CH buildings by disseminating the obtained results through national and international scale activities.
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HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation ActionsCoordinator
15341 Agia Paraskevi
Greece