Building typology: analysis of the building stock and typologies definition

Futureproofing historic buildings on a large scale is an ambitious target: carbon neutrality goals call for quick actions; instead, the energy retrofitting of historic buildings requires complex planning to optimize the energy savings with the preservation of cultural value. FuturHist aims to develop typology-based strategies to boost the futureproofing of buildings erected before 1945. Typology-based strategies can enhance the potential of existing tools for the energy retrofitting of historic buildings because they link retrofit solutions to specific building typologies – rather than only to specific buildings or building components. However, a comprehensive methodology to define historic building typologies needs to be defined to close the gap between building typologies based on statistical average quantitative data and the characterisation of historic buildings based on isolated example.

This task focuses on the definition of the building typologies that are used in FuturHist and on the quantification of their energy performance. First, a methodology to define historic building typologies is developed to characterise historic buildings considering general information, geometric parameters, architectural characteristics and heritage elements to be preserved. Second, the methodology is applied to define nine typologies of historic buildings located in Spain, Poland, Sweden and UK. Third, the energy performance of the defined typologies is quantified considering U-values of building envelope components and energy demand and consumption for heating and cooling.

The results of this task show that it is possible to apply a typology-based characterisation to historic buildings. However, the features selected to define the typologies only refer to the original configuration of the buildings. For this reason, a series of variable features complements the characterisation, providing information about the most typical current situation of the buildings belonging to a defined typology. The energy performance of the typologies has been quantified generating ranges of values. This strategy takes into account the variability of building materials and construction techniques of historic buildings.