Energy Efficiency and Heritage Values in Heritage Buildings

“Energy Efficiency and Heritage Values in Heritage Buildings: Future Challenges and Research Needs”, a special issue of the peer-reviewed journal The Historic Environment: Policy and Practice, has recently been published. This issue, guest edited by Professor May Cassar and Dr Kalliopi Fouseki, examines current challenges and future research needs in relation to energy efficiency of heritage buildings. 

With current national and international imperatives to reduce drastically greenhouse-gas emissions across Europe by 2020, heritage practitioners working on the conservation of historic and ‘traditional’ buildings face great challenges in terms of balancing energy efficiency measures and technologies with heritage values. This issue illustrates these challenges through examples from the UK, Italy and Sweden. 

The papers included in this special issue discuss ways in which heritage values - in particular aesthetics, originality and authenticity - can be assessed and integrated into existing decision-making models. The authors who represent a diverse range of disciplines including architecture, engineering, anthropology, history, sociology and heritage management, stress the necessity for interdisciplinary collaboration and research in tackling this complex matter. They further highlight the need for involving local communities inhabiting heritage buildings into decision-making processes and value assessment. 

This issue will be of relevance to students, researchers and practitioners who specialise in heritage conservation and heritage management. 

The article can be accessed on this website.