03 . 28 . 2016

Building Resilience: Practical Guidelines for the Rehabilitation of Buildings in Canada Officially Launches

AUTHOR Chris Warden

The Federal / Provincial / Territorial Collaboration on Historic Places in Canada Working Group has released Building Resilience: Practical Guidelines for the Rehabilitation of Buildings in Canada.

Co-authored by Mark Thompson Brandt and Chris Warden of MTBA Associates Inc., Building Resilienceis a comprehensive and sustainable building toolkit that presents practical illustrated guidance and real life examples presented in plain language.

This comprehensive package offers best practices, tools and guidelines for sustainable reuse or retrofit of heritage buildings and all existing buildings to improve environmental performance.  Using actual cases to challenge the perception that older buildings are energy inefficient, Building Resilienceencourages working across sectors to promote the benefits of an integrated approach.  Building Resilience combines environmental planning, design and construction processes with heritage conservation to achieve sustainable and sensitive design solutions that will have positive and far-reaching policy implications for the future of Canada’s existing and historic built environment.  These guidelines can be used as a standalone, but also complement the Standards and Guidelines for the Conservation of Historic Places in Canada.

Building Resilience: Practical Guidelines for the Rehabilitation of Buildings in Canada can be found online here:

English Link:
http://www.historicplaces.ca/en/pages/resources-ressources.aspx

Bonjour,
Accroître la résilience est maintenant accessible au public en ligne à HistoricPlaces.ca dans la section des ressources. J’ai inclus un lien ci-dessous. Merci.

Lien pour la version Francais
http://www.historicplaces.ca/fr/pages/resources-ressources.aspx

Sustainable Rehabilitation of Buildings from the Modern period

Building Resilience builds upon the increased focus on buildings from the Modern period contained within the Standards and Guidelines.  The document includes a discussion section on unique considerations for these buildings as compared to earlier buildings and practical guidelines that are applicable to modern period buildings.  Selecting the most responsive rehabilitation approach can be uniquely challenging for Modern period buildings for both performance and heritage reasons. The use of relatively untested assemblies and materials with limited lifespans can make character-retaining modifications more difficult, as the systems may no longer be produced and may be unsalvageable. To accommodate the shift away from traditional construction and craftsmanship, the conservation of Modern-era buildings places greater emphasis on original design intent rather than material integrity. There are both unique challenges and unique opportunities presented by Modern period buildings, most commonly related to systemization. The Modern era was witness to the greatest building campaign in human history, expending countless resources to create a built environment of varying quality and physical conditions. With differing maintenance and life cycle challenges, these buildings offer an enormous opportunity to reduce worldwide energy consumption. They also represent part of the “Canadian experience”, demanding greater attention to determine what buildings and sites possess heritage value.