Now, a sustainable future for historic buildings

PHOTO: MIKAEL WALLERSTEDT

Can an ordinary house from the mid-20th century be a bearer of cultural values? And how do we protect a Renaissance palace without consuming unreasonable amounts of energy? Researchers from a range of disciplines are coming together to create improved conditions for energy efficiency in culturally valuable buildings.

IN SWEDEN, bisected by the Arctic Circle and thus encompassing Arctic areas, protecting culturally valuable buildings plus efficient energy use is a complicated equation to balance. Many churches and stately homes are left unheated during the winter months, often resulting in severe interior damage. With regard to more modern structures, it is estimated that one in three single-family homes suffer from problems such as damp and mould. This represents a formidable challenge for policy makers and property owners and since 2008 Uppsala University and the Swedish Energy Agency have been leading the interdisciplinary research programme Save and Preserve.

“Our ambition is to provide the necessary knowledge and recommendations to ensure that the management of valuable buildings contributes to meeting policy objectives for both cultural heritage and energy consumption. From initially focusing on the country’s relatively few protected monumental buildings, over the years we have widened our remit to include a much higher percentage of existing building stock and even area analyses,” says Tor Broström, Professor of Conservation and the project’s scientific coordinator.

UNLIKE PREVIOUS INITIATIVES aimed at either conservation or energy aspects, Save and Preserve represents an interdisciplinary arena uniting the humanities, social sciences, engineering and natural sciences. This meeting creates new perspectives and space in which to sort and weigh up various scenarios for the development of building stock. It also provides a forum for discussion on what should actually be considered to be of cultural value.

“This is a relevant question that is far from easy to answer. According to the Swedish National Board of Housing, Building and Planning, buildings predating the 1920s should generally be viewed as of particular value. That said, there is no exact age limit, rather it appears to be a generational issue; for example, many younger people espouse the architectural importance of relatively modern buildings. The basic principles of energy efficiency are however the same regardless of the building’s age, so the most important thing is that we have a constructive dialogue with clear synergies between saving and preserving.”

ONE OF THE common threads running through the research programme is to

In Sweden new knowledge has led to dehumidification becoming quickly established as a sustainable method for maintaining older churches.

Tor Broström, Professor of Conservation.

PHOTO: LINNEA RONSTRÖM

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Save and Preserve

• is a research and development programme initiated by the Swedish Energy Agency to increase knowledge of energy efficiency in historically valuable buildings;

• aims to develop and convey knowledge and technological solutions that contribute to energy efficiency in these buildings without destroying or distorting their qualities or fixtures and fittings; and

• is financed by the Swedish Energy Agency and coordinated by Uppsala University.

provide policy support rather than answers: what needs to be considered before a renovation, what skills are demanded and what might be reasonable goals? One stated ambition is to make the decision process easier and work has already begun on a number of concrete measures. Beyond Sweden’s borders, researchers from the programme have formulated new European guidelines for improving energy efficiency in historic buildings in collaboration with the European Committee for Standardisation. In Sweden itself, new knowledge has led to dehumidification becoming quickly established as a sustainable method for maintaining older churches.

“Without doubt, we are working in an international field; among other things, we have hosted a guest researcher from Cairo who is currently applying our results in Egypt. We recently accepted an offer to participate in a European collaboration tasked with implementing smart climate control in the rebuilding of Notre Dame. And in the next phase of Save and Preserve, we will be working with researchers in Norway and Germany to develop new methods for climate control and impact assessments.”

IN THIS FOURTH stage of the research programme, the Swedish Energy Agency has approved grants of SEK 50 million to be shared between a number of projects. Several of these initiatives will be conducted in collaborations between academia, the private sector, institutes and public authorities. Once again, the emphasis will be on more contemporary buildings and a study will be conducted to survey single-family homes built up to and including the 1970s, with regard to their construction, renovation and protection against distortion.

“Homeowners generally make small changes when maintaining their properties; so, based on the development since the oil crisis of the 1970s until today, we will conduct a project to prepare packages of careful energy efficiency measures for various types of single-family homes – something that we hope will make a significant contribution to implementing Sweden’s integrated national energy and climate plan,” says Broström. 

– Magnus Alsne