Two lodges being part of the Whitefoord House residential complex

142 and 144 Calton Road
EH8 8DP Edinburgh, the United Kingdom

General information

Building manager

Scottish Veterans Residences (SVR), a Registered Social Landlord, owns the demo case lodges. SVR Principally provides supported accommodation for homeless military Veterans or those at risk of homelessness. It has three campuses in Edinburgh, Dundee, and Glasgow, with 144 residents. On the Edinburgh campus, there are 74 residents, a mix of 18th—and 20th-century buildings and 85 ensuite rooms/11 flats/1 townhouse.

Edinburgh World Heritage (EWH) is the leader of this demo case.


Building age

18th century (≈1770)


Protection level

B listed (significant examples of a period, style or building type).


Building use

Residential, social housing and part of it is an office space.


Building area

No data.


Construction type

Harled rubble masonry walls.


Building typology

Most of Edinburgh’s Old Town was originally lime-harl rendered because of its double function against severe climate and thermal losses. Accordingly, testing insulated lime render with self-healing properties, planned within FuturHist, is particularly relevant in Edinburgh and Scotland.


Geographical area and context

Edinburgh has a cold and humid winter and mild summer with an annual mean temperature of 9°C. Due to the changing climate, Edinburgh has witnessed wetter winters and hotter summers.


Ongoing activities

The City of Edinburgh Council has set a target to become a net zero city by 2030. In 2020-21, emissions from buildings in Edinburgh made up 66% of the council’s carbon footprint. EWH runs two grant programmes, the Climate Emergency Grant and Conservation Repair Programme, delivering architectural conservation and energy retrofit works to traditional buildings within Edinburgh’s World Heritage Site and its vicinity.


Works planned under the FuturHist project

We will test an innovative self-healing and insulated lime render in the project. It will provide data on the existing and retrofitted performance to test and verify the tools. ‘Before’ monitoring will inform the thermal and environmental performance modelling, and the ‘after’ monitoring will refine this tool. Defining typologies in Scotland will help the demo to situate the lesson learned from the energy solution within the broader context of the building stock in Scotland and the UK.


Demo case team

Edinburgh World Heritage
Eurac Research
University of Strathclyde
Calchèra San Giorgio