What is FuturHist?

Drawing the baseline – what is essential to improve the planning process of energy retrofit of historic buildings?

It’s the starting point for FuturHist. With precise research questions in the back of our heads, while doing surveys and in-depth interviews, we explore barriers that practitioners, building owners, and public authorities face while going through the planning process of retrofitting. The barriers analysis is accompanied by the policy framework study, based on building codes and regulations, and interviews with heritage authorities in the demonstration sites (Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the UK). The focus will be on the different legislation levels: local, regional, national, and European. 

The local building stock analysis and typology definition are essential to the project’s initial phase. Local partners in 4 demonstration areas will collect information about the buildings’ characteristics, including energy performance and occupants’ comfort, to enhance the replicability potential of solutions developed within the project. Every building studied in FuturHist is an example of a larger group of buildings with similar features.  Within these building typologies, we will also map the current renovation practices. 

Lastly, numerous guidelines and tools have been developed for energy retrofitting in historic buildings. While these contributions are of high value, it is challenging for practitioners to use these vast resources partially because they are often partial and disconnected from each other. In FuturHist, we will select and incorporate the most useful guidelines and tools into the decision-making toolkit. 

By exploring the research areas of the project’s initial phase, FuturHist will simplify and standardise the planning process, making it more effective and leaving room for sophisticated analyses only where needed. To make this possible, we will set Key Performance Indicators to enable transparent assessment methods. 

Passive solutions for efficient historic buildings

In this part of FuturHist, we will focus on sustainable solutions for refurbishing historic buildings, emphasising energy efficiency, durability, and conservation compatibility. It includes documenting conservation-friendly retrofit options, developing internal and external finishing solutions, analysing the sustainability of insulation systems, and exploring the reuse and upcycling of windows. 

While assessing internal and external insulation system variants, we will focus on natural materials like clay, natural lime, and biochar. In the case of external finishing solutions, we will also explore the self-healing properties of lime applied to an insulating render. We will implement these solutions in the demonstration cases and describe their performance results ex-post. 

FuturHist fosters the sustainable retrofit of historic windows. The objective is to make sustainable window upgrades the primary choice over replacements in historic building retrofits. It involves mapping and inventorying best practices, developing tailored solutions for demo cases, quantifying energy performance increases through lab testing, calculating life cycle carbon, and analysing waste reduction potential. The ambition is to preserve the diversity of historic windows, promote durability, and reduce environmental impact. 

Active systems for a clean energy transition

Using energy for heating, cooling, and ventilation of buildings is responsible for a significant proportion of the built environment’s carbon emissions. When attempting to meet modern standards of indoor comfort and climate conditions, historic buildings with high energy demands face even more significant challenges. FuturHist will design and develop innovative HVAC packages adapted to retrofit historic buildings. Starting from an analysis of commercial technologies conventionally used to cover the thermal needs of historic buildings, we will move forward to identify baseline praxes and highlight related energy and environmental performance. 

FuturHist will elaborate on innovative solution packages adapted to building typologies identified in the project’s first phase. The solution packages will be tailored to meet the specific needs of the project’s demonstration buildings. 

The potential of RES integration in historic buildings, especially in demo case countries, will also be researched. 

Development of an integrated planning toolkit

In FuturHist, we will develop and test a multidimensional decision-making methodology and a decision support system, structured as a step-by-step toolkit, to be integrated into the planning process of historic building renovation. 

The decision-making methodology will weigh the different aspects to consider in a retrofit, whereas the toolkit will support the project’s multidimensional aim with supporting tools in each category for a better-informed decision. 

In most cases, several solutions will be needed to achieve extensive energy savings and improved comfort; the methodology, therefore, has to combine the effect of several solutions as they might interfere. It usually requires complex and time-consuming simulations, often leading to abandoning it in practice. Instead, in FuturHist, we will gather information and tools from previous research projects and combine these with new knowledge developed into the toolkit that helps the user find an optimised holistic renovation concept. 

To ensure the result’s applicability, the toolkit will be tailored to four typologies corresponding to the four demo cases, considering aspects like climate, construction materials, and heritage significance. 

Demonstration 

Demonstration is at the core of the project. The solutions developed as well as the approach will be implemented and tested in four cases in Spain, Poland, Sweden, and the UK. The diversity and geographical distribution of the demo cases will ensure the validation under different climates, construction typologies, and socio-economic environments. The demo case owners, as members of the consortium, will facilitate a rapid uptake of the results to be implemented in their large portfolios immediately after the completion of the project. For more information, please see the demonstration buildings section on the FuturHist website.