2
BCD SPECIAL REPORT ON
HERITAGE RETROFIT
FIRST ANNUAL EDITION
HERITAGE AND
SUSTAINABILITY
DENNIS RODWELL
T
ODAY, PAST the halfway mark in
the first quarter of the 21st century,
we are challenged by a number
of coincidental global agendas: the
exhaustion of the key non-renewable
material and energy resources which
industrialised and developing countries
currently depend on; recognition of the
relationship between the burning of
fossil fuels, carbon dioxide emissions and
global warming (‘climate change’); and
the agenda of sustainable development,
articulated in the 1987
Brundtland
Report
, affirmed at the 1992 Rio de
Janeiro Earth Summit, and reinforced
in the
2015 United Nations Sustainable
Development Goals
.
Sustainable development has many
interpretations, but two will suffice in the
context of this article.
First, the concept of sustainability
is defined in ecology as the capacity of
systems to endure and remain diverse
and productive over time. It signifies
durability, is dynamic and not static, and
presupposes resilience and adaptability
to change. Elaborating this, sustainable
development is defined in the 1991
publication
Caring for the Earth
as
development directed at ‘improving the
quality of human life while living within
the carrying capacity of supporting
ecosystems’ (see Further Information
for details of all cited publications). The
2010 European Union
Toledo Declaration
on Urban Development
encapsulates the
multiple dimensions of sustainability
as ‘economic, social, environmental,
cultural and governance’. It stresses the
importance of cultural heritage alongside
building rehabilitation.
Second, whereas the 1987
Brundtland
Report
has been criticised in many
quarters for its emphasis on economic
growth, an oft-overlooked passage on the
first page reads: ‘We see the possibility
for a new era of economic growth, one
that
must
[author’s italics] be based on
policies that sustain and expand the
environmental resource base’.
The environmental resource base that
concerns us here has two components,
renewable and non-renewable. The latter
divides into the unexploited, for which
tables of reserves and projected expiration
dates are regularly published, and the
exploited. The environmental resources
already exploited for the development
of our existing buildings and urban
infrastructure include both the materials
themselves and the fuels used in their
extraction, manufacture, transportation
and construction – their ‘embodied energy’.
This investment provides the building
conservation and retrofit sector with a
vital role in today’s global agendas which
extends beyond a reductionist focus on
‘architectural or historic interest’ premised
on selective survival. In a Europe-wide
context the importance of conserving this
embodied resource is underlined by the
estimation that 80 per cent of the buildings
that will exist in the year 2050 have already
been built. This figure varies regionally,
increasing to 87 per cent relative to the
housing stock in Scotland for example.
The Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation, which opened in 2013, is a category A listed former school. Its
refurbishment used low carbon materials including highly engineered timber and reclaimed steelwork. It is the
first refurbished historic building in the UK to achieve a BREEAM ‘Outstanding’ rating. (Photo: Dave Morris)