Closed circulation loops in historic buildings. Cultural diagnosis as one of the major factors in a contemporary designer’s workshop

Abstract

Abstract Sustainable development has now become an element that is deeply integrated in contemporary architectonic design and urban planning. With the development of a modern designer’s workshop, resilience, passive, ecological, plus energy or nZEB buildings and various smart city issues have to be included in line with more conventional analyses prepared during the design processes. Currently, we also face the emerging theme of the circular economy. This has a great impact, not just on the introduction of circular loops into the flow of building materials, but also on the design approach and management choices. Historic heritage buildings forming part of the building stock must be considered within this new theme. Most existing research deals either with new or modernised buildings, or with the re-use flows of various materials, actually often coming from historic buildings which have passed beyond the limits of repair. This paper shows a different approach to historic buildings where a design was prepared focusing on best choice cases and included a chain of several intertwining approaches, presented against the background of a Polish case study in Warsaw. The aim of this work is to propose a design management procedure to be used when dealing with historic buildings. It follows both the path of a circular economy and of heritage values, emphasising the need to maintain as much of the existing fabric as possible. This analysis is also based on various issues of site research and is followed by historic building case analysis.