Balancing heritage and environment
I read an article today that focuses on Vancouver architect Gair Williamson’s view the trade offs when balancing heritage preservation with trying to develop “green” projects. Williamson works on redeveloping heritage properties in Vancouver, and explains in a Journal of Commerce article that preserving the look, character and original materials of heritage buildings may not allow for the use of the greenest modern building techniques. However, this may be countered in part by preserving the buildings that are in place; Williamson is quoted as saying:
“An existing building is an invested resource of energy and material, [b]y preserving that, we’re meeting some of the goals of green building, but by any performance-based standards, these buildings are not green.”
1 comment:
I think the preservation of the buildings and recycling them instead of putting them into a landfill would more than make up for the benefits a "green" building provides.
Even with an older home you can still replace windows (with proper new wood windows), replace doors, insulate, adjust heating options for better energy efficiency, weatherstrip and fill cracks, utilize low flow toilets/faucets, etc. Obviously you likely won't get an energy rating as high as one of the new modern homes, but I would guess the overall footprint of building a new building is much worse than preserving and maintaining and older building. The energy taken to construct new materials, fuel to build the structure, throwing so much old material in a landfill, etc is mush worse than maintaining an older building.
I recently had the energy audit done to my single family home, and with very, very simple improvements I moved my score up 17 points so that it is in the highest possible class now. Again, not as high as a modern building, but very comfortable and the small difference between my new rating and a normal rating of a new building isn't much. For that small difference you would likely never waste more energy than is wasted destroying heritage and throwing it in a landfill. This is a all energy specific as well, not event taking into account the cultural value of built heritage or any of it's other benefits.
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