Building typology: analysis of the building stock and typologies definition

Futureproofing historic buildings on a large scale is an ambitious target: carbon <br/>neutrality goals call for quick actions; instead, the energy retrofitting of historic <br/>buildings requires complex planning to optimize the energy savings with the <br/>preservation of cultural value. FuturHist aims to develop typology-based strategies to <br/>boost the futureproofing of buildings erected before 1945. Typology-based strategies <br/>can enhance the potential of existing tools for the energy retrofitting of historic <br/>buildings because they link retrofit solutions to specific building typologies – rather <br/>than only to specific buildings or building components. However, a comprehensive <br/>methodology to define historic building typologies needs to be defined to close the <br/>gap between building typologies based on statistical average quantitative data and<br/>the characterisation of historic buildings based on isolated example.<br/><br/>This task focuses on the definition of the building typologies that are used in FuturHist<br/>and on the quantification of their energy performance. First, a methodology to define <br/>historic building typologies is developed to characterise historic buildings considering <br/>general information, geometric parameters, architectural characteristics and <br/>heritage elements to be preserved. Second, the methodology is applied to define nine<br/>typologies of historic buildings located in Spain, Poland, Sweden and UK. Third, the <br/>energy performance of the defined typologies is quantified considering U-values of <br/>building envelope components and energy demand and consumption for heating <br/>and cooling. <br/><br/>The results of this task show that it is possible to apply a typology-based <br/>characterisation to historic buildings. However, the features selected to define the <br/>typologies only refer to the original configuration of the buildings. For this reason, a <br/>series of variable features complements the characterisation, providing information <br/>about the most typical current situation of the buildings belonging to a defined <br/>typology. The energy performance of the typologies has been quantified generating <br/>ranges of values. This strategy takes into account the variability of building materials <br/>and construction techniques of historic buildings. <br/><br/>The typologies defined in this task include the ones of the demonstrator buildings (for <br/>which retrofitting solutions will be developed in WP2 and WP3 and tested in WP5) and <br/>the ones to be used for the replication phase in WP6. Furthermore, the features <br/>identified to define typologies, as well as the range-based method to quantify the <br/>energy performance of historic building typologies constitute inputs for WP4.