The built environment contributes around 40% of the UK’s total carbon footprint, and 21% of homes are over 100 years old and are characterised by traditional construction. There is an assumption that historic, traditional buildings will always have a low value Energy Performance Certificate (EPC), and energy retrofits / upgrades are often dismissed on the basis of aesthetics, ideas of historic fabric retention, or due to apparent prohibitive costs. Yet analysis of historic buildings reveals they frequently perform better than expected and historic buildings in turn represent embodied carbon as such adaptation to the historic built environment as central to responding to climate change.
This session considers how embedding climate and ecological sustainability at the foundation of training and heritage planning can bring whole-life carbon and energy efficiency analyses to bear on the choices made for historic buildings and areas, the session will consider best practice case studies to inform approaches to retaining, maintaining, repairing and adapting existing buildings – as an alternative to wasteful cycles of demolition. At the nexus of housing, planning, heritage and environmental policy the session will consider how to disrupt traditional ways of thinking about ‘old buildings’.
Heritage Declares is a non-affiliated group of heritage practitioners who have come together to urge the sector to react more quickly and effectively to the climate and ecological emergency.
Chair: Dr Louise Cooke, Senior Lecturer Conservation, University of York / Heritage Declares
Speakers
Heritage Declares: a new way of thinking about buildings
Robyn Sparkes, National Trust
Examples from practice
Chloe Sheward, Donald Insall Associates
Training the decision makers
Dr Louise Cooke, University of York
