Archives for Adaptive Reuse

LCA All the Way

April 23, 2014 Joseph Maguire

At SERF, we hold with the maxim that the greenest building is the one that is already built.

Except when we don’t.

It is generally the case that the reuse of an existing structure is a more sustainable route, even measured over a long time period, than demolition, disposal and construction of a new building, even one chalk full of energy-saving bells and whistles.

But as new systems—many of which are cost-prohibitive to install in existing buildings– lead to ever greater efficiencies, we see that maxims are not rules.  The path to determining the sustainable benefit of building new versus reuse lies in Life Cycle Analysis (LCA).

SERF Foundation’s Director of Research Stan Samuel has co-authored a white paper on Life Cycle Analysis and its potential to aid green building rating systems compare reuse versus new construction

Download a copy here

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Historic Structures Deserve VIP Treatment

September 25, 2012 Stan Samuel

Restoration of historic buildings is tricky business. Among other challenges, preservation concerns severely limit façade alterations.

Restoration often includes deep energy retrofits which generally increase the thermal resistance (R-value) of the envelope. For existing structures adding insulation to the exterior is generally preferred over the interior as adding insulation from the inside will reduce its floor area. But for historic structures this approach is self-defeating.

Vacuum insulation has been used widely in non-building applications like refrigerators, thermos containers, and thermal doors. Its use in building envelope insulation is fairly new and still in R&D.  Vacuum Insulated Panels (VIPs) are composed of two stainless steel plates which sandwich a core of vacuum and fumed silica.

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The Greenest Building is the one that is already built

August 21, 2012 Joseph Maguire

This elegant phrase by architect Carl Elefante is bolstered by an important new study, The Greenest Building:  Quantifying the Environmental Value of Building Reuse.

National Real Estate Investor opines that the study, commissioned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Preservation Green Lab, empirically shows, “It is unequivocally greener to retrofit an old building than construct a new building, no matter how many high-tech bells and whistles are in the new construction.”

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