The book provides a complete vision about Spanish sustainable renovation of buildings situation at this moment, analysing legal and technological context and opportunities that economic stimulus —by means of direct aids— and the use of BIM methodologies offers a standardization of high scale interventions. Nowadays, BIM models let us integrate multiple quantitative parameters that can agile the information to interchange between stakeholders. Using this potential to standardize protocols of interventions and share knowledge is necessary to face a high scale intervention that our cities need. Climatic Emergency and socioeconomic crisis caused by recent events —COVID-19 and hydrocarbons crisis— are the two principal struggles we face as society. European Politics, embodied by National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs) developed by each region give the way to the green transition of different productive sectors. Our building stock is responsible for approximately 36% of the CO2 emissions in the European Union. For this reason, these policies focus a large part of their efforts on economically incentivizing a new development model for the building sector that is committed to the large-scale renovation of the existing real estate stock and that, through the reduction of energy demand and of emissions, manage to reduce the environmental impact of these. Next Generation EU is the new recovery instrument that aims to mobilize investments towards strategic sectors for the reorientation of the production model that, among other measures, contributes to decarbonization through the promotion of energy efficiency and the deployment of renewable energies.

The complete resource on performing sustainable renovations for both Historic and modern existing buildings This forward-looking and insightful guide explores how the sustainable renovation of existing buildings presents great opportunities for initiating extensive changes in the performance of the built environment. Great examples of existing building upgrades are examined, illustrating how to do sustainable renovations, along with current design approaches for radically improving the functionality of existing prewar, postwar, and late modern buildings. Sustainable Renovation saves its key focus for institutional and commercial buildings, but discusses the challenges they pose within a global scope that encompasses all building practices. Some of the discussions in this book include: The significance of energy and resource demands by the building sector and the urgency of reducing loads in existing buildings Management, design, and construction approaches to achieve major modernization in occupied buildings International case studies that focus on methods and benefits of successful sustainable transformations of existing building performance Repurposing buildings to preserve style and add performance remains a work in progress as designers and builders discover new methods for improving sustainable practices and standards. With incremental modernization and operations strategies available for immediate implementation, this book demonstrates the different ways of thinking necessary when considering and attempting the integration of sustainable concepts into existing buildings—and enables readers to rethink the world that's built around them.

The Sustainable Renovation of Buildings and Neighborhoods is a collection of papers presented at the International Congress of Sustainable Construction and Eco‐efficient Solutions. This event has established itself as a forum for meeting academics from around the word, researchers and professionals of the construction sector, in which environmental information is shared with a multidisciplinary context, and which involves participants from different areas of the construction process. The congress brings together development proposals through a shared vision of environmental sustainability and presents alternative solutions to problems through technical presentations and trainings, in order to minimize the environmental impact caused by the construction sector. This monograph celebrates the event’s second international edition and its fourth national edition. The volume contains selected articles written by the participants. Readers will find information about interesting, new developments and concepts on • Energy retrofitting in older buildings • Tools to determine and measure environmental impact and sustainability indicators • Economic / cost based revaluation of buildings through the viability of eco‐efficient solutions • Reduction of the consumption of material and energy resources and in CO2 emissions • Sustainability research based on the renovation of urban areas. The studies in this book provide real examples from different countries (Argentina and Spain, for example). The Sustainable Renovation of Buildings and Neighborhoods is a useful reference for researchers and professional architects involved in sustainable development, environmental rehabilitation and the construction industry.

This book provides an overview of the environmental problems that arise from construction activity, focusing on refurbishment as an alternative to the current crisis in the construction sector, as well as on measures designed to minimize the effects on the environment. Furthermore, it offers professionals insights into alternative eco-efficient solutions using new materials to minimize environmental impacts and offers solutions that they can incorporate into their own designs and buildings. It also demonstrates best practices in the cooperation between various universities in Andalusia in Spain and Latin America and many public and private companies and organizations. This book serves as a valuable reference resource for professionals and researchers and provides an overview on the status of investigations to find solutions to improve sustainable development in terms of materials, systems, facilities, neighborhoods, buildings, and awareness of the society involved.

This book reviews the building renovation process by systematizing the phases of analysis and prior knowledge through a project that not only considers energy savings but also thoroughly examines complex issues, such as defining the correct new functions and answers to new needs. The urgency of climate change and the many problems associated with the excessive use of energy are forcing a reorganization of the renovation process with an interest in reusing existing buildings with a more sustainable approach. The adaptive transformation of old buildings has become a dominant theme in many urban renewal projects. It must necessarily include strategies for energy efficiency, reduced pollutant emissions, improved environmental performance, economic sustainability and cultural identity. The examples selected are intended to provide evidence of good practices in the review and transformation of old buildings.

The principle of sustainability should be strictly connected with safety, since both aim to conserve resources: in the case of sustainability, the resources are typically thought of as environmental, while in the case of safety, the resources are basically human. In spite of this common ground, discussions on sustainability usually give insufficient attention to safety. In the last years the EU has made large investments to increase the energy efficiency of the existing building stock, paving the way for a low-carbon future; however, less effort has been made to enhance its seismic resilience. Therefore, the safety and, consequently, the sustainability of towns situated in earthquake-prone countries remain inadequate. In such countries, energy renovation actions should be combined with seismic retrofitting. However, a number of barriers considerably limit the real possibility of extensively undertaking combined retrofit actions, especially for multi-owner housing and high-rise buildings. These barriers are of different kinds: technical (e.g., unfeasibility and/or ineffectiveness of conventional retrofit solutions), financial (e.g., high renovation costs, insufficient incentives/subsidies), organizational (e.g., occupants’ disruption and relocation, renovation consensus by condominium ownerships), and cultural/social (insufficient information and skills, lack of adequate policy measures for promoting renovation actions). This book aims to overcome these barriers and to bridge the gap between sustainability and safety, so to conserve both human and environmental resources.

This volume contains the extended versions of selected papers presented at the first Mediterranean Conference "Sharing Knowledge on Sustainable Building" held at the Polytechnic ofBari in December 1999, supported by the National Research Council of Italy. The publication of this book was made possible through the efforts of the contributing Authors. Other people have provided invaluable support for the conference and for the preparation of this volume; in particular, I wish to thank Antonella Lerario for providing support in the final editing of the text and images. 1 As reported in Boonstra and Rovers (200 I) , people spend a great deal of time inside buildings; therefore, decisions about design, construction, use, maintenance, renovation, demolition, reuse and recycling of buildings have a huge impact on the sustainable development of our society. Technical aspects, however, should be supported by adequate policies, developed with appropriate tools and driven by meaningful challenges. For people involved in sustainable buildings, the conceptual frameworks, studies and experiences collected in this volume, organized into three parts - "Policies", "Tools" and "Challenges" - will help to advance knowledge allowing them to adopt and more efficiently implement such innovations sooner.

Despite recent improvements in energy efficiency being made in new build, it is important that the existing commercial building sector also take action to meet emission reduction targets. The objectives and challenges of such action will reduce the risk of the sector becoming obsolete due to high energy use and poor environmental performance. This book presents a theory-based, practice-support methodology to deal with sustainable retrofitting opportunities for existing commercial buildings in warm climates using bioclimatic design as the basis. The book has four main parts, focusing on eco-design and renovation, bioclimatic retrofitting, technological and behavioural change and case studies of retrofitting exemplars. In the first part, the context of climate change effects on design and renovation at the city scale is discussed. The second part looks at bioclimatic retrofitting as a 'design guide' for existing buildings, highlighting the significance of architectural design and engineering systems for energy performance. The technological and behavioural contexts of the existing building sector – policies, modelling, monitoring and trend analysis in respect to energy and environmental performance – are covered in part three. The final part gives some case studies showing the effectiveness of strategies suggested for effective environmental performance. This book is a must-have guide for all involved in the design and engineering of retrofitting projects in warm climates.

Sustainable Preservation takes a nuanced look at the hundreds of choices that adaptive reuse requires architects to make—from ingenious ways to redeploy existing structural elements to time-honored techniques for natural ventilation to creation of wetlands that restore a site's natural biological functions. In addition, Sustainable Preservation presents 50 case studies of projects—schools, houses, offices, stores, museums, and government buildings—that set new standards for holistic approaches to adaptive reuse and sustainability. The author covers design issues, from building location to lighting systems, renewable power options, stormwater handling, and building envelope protection and integrity. The book also reviews operational issues, including materials choices for low lifetime maintenance, green housekeeping, and indoor air quality.