Sustainable and Balanced Energy Efficiency and Preservation in Our Built Heritage

Heidi Norrström

doi:10.3390/su5062623

Abstract

Today, conservation work in our built cultural heritage has to be reformulated due to the new energy efficiency requirements put forward. On both a national and an international level, energy efficiency measures are considered key actions within sustainability work, answering to the global issue of climate change. What does this imply for our built heritage? Contemporary conservation is characterized by the concept of sustainability, and integrated conservation is also expected to be sustainable. It is inherent in this tradition, but how are we going to balance the historic and architectural values with the new energy requirements? A research project, Energy Efficiency in Our Cultural Heritage (EEPOCH), consisting of a multiple case study, has been carried out over three years, studying selected objects restored within the Halland Model, a project over a decade long. In EEPOCH the multiple units of analysis are energy efficiency, historic and architectural values, management, and legislation. All are applied to the selected objects. The results and conclusions drawn from the analysis show that there are actions that are possible to take and to recommend, including national inventories of historic values in the existing building stock as well as guidance for the management of historic values on a municipal level for continued sustainable development.

Highlights

In the 1990s the restorations were ambitious about the preservation of values, and this is mirrored in one of the cases studied, Fattighuset in Halmstad, even though it seems that the preservation of cultural value had been given much greater weight than issues of energy efficiency and good indoor climate
The balanced example with a high level of preservation is Teatern in Laholm where the energy efficiency measures taken were performed with respect for cultural value and the energy use is low in relative terms
When interviews were carried out with municipal officials all informants answered. They would rather consider cultural values than make unreasonable demands on energy efficiency, which are impossible to fulfill. They enlist the help of Heritage Halland, a department of the regional museum, and of their conservation officers to assess historic values in individual cases

Summary

Introduction

Heritage Convention [1], one of the built environments restored within the Halland Model, the Varberg Radio Station at Grimeton, is a World Heritage site. Instead it is about our common, everyday, built environment, our inherited cultural spaces; a symbolic expression for human life. Preserving the different time layers generates diversity and means preserving memory, the intangible value giving meaning to a place for people using it In Sweden in the early 1990s, when national funding was available for inventories, about 3,000 buildings were identified as historically valuable in the county of Halland. Similar results are likely to appear in other parts of Sweden and Europe if, and when, inventories are carried out

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion