Selection of Core Indicators for the Sustainable Conservation of Built Heritage

Abstract

This paper presents and discusses the selection of a set of core indicators for the sustainable conservation of built heritage. This core set of indicators was selected by following a two-step methodology: 1) first, a comparative analysis of indicators of two building sustainability assessment (BSA) tools with different approaches was performed by using content analysis to identify common priorities; 2) second, a selection of the indicators according to scale, stage of the life cycle, and coverage of core aspects for sustainable development, following the criteria established by the International Organization for Standardization. The results show that even if current methodologies have different structures, terminology, and priorities, they share common principles that promote a more sustainable built environment. However, by being mostly oriented to the intervention and operation phases, these methods do not have direct application as an assessment framework for the sustainable conservation of the built heritage. To overcome this situation, this research presents a concise set of indicators that can support the development of an assessment tool to ensure the sustainable conservation of existing buildings.

Building passport for the sustainable conservation of built heritage

“…The construction of the assessment tool was based on literature regarding sustainability and built heritage. The selection of core indicators (Gonçalves et al, 2021) crossed indicators from two BSA (building sustainability assessment) methodsone focussed on heritage buildings (Versus) and one focussed on regenerative design (Living Building Challenge), with the recommendations from the ISO 21929-1 standard on indicators for sustainability in building construction (ISO, 2011).…”

“…In the layer "Spirit of Place", Kuipers and De Jonge (2017) refer to community and place relationships. These building layers and attributes were thus related with the sustainability indicators (Gonçalves et al, 2021) as described in the diagram in Figure 1. As an example, the layer "spirit of place" is related with the indicators "places to gather and connect" (community and public spaces), "place-based relationships" (integration with cultural context, historical events, traditions) and "environmental features" (integration with surroundings: colours, textures, materials, views and craftsmanship) (Kellert et al, 2011).…”

“…These tools have the potential to contribute to the implementation of sustainability objectives at the management level (Ornelas et al, 2020;Leus and Verhelst, 2018), and to assess the sustainability of adaptive reuse and conservation projects in heritage buildings (Boarin et al, 2014). However, the literature shows that the existing sets of indicators are insufficient to ensure an adequate baseline assessment of heritage buildings to sustainability before conservation interventions (Gonçalves et al, 2021). This baseline assessment is of utmost importance to inform the future steps of design, with a balanced integration of environmental and cultural factors (Gonçalves et al, 2021;Appendino, 2018;Correia et al, 2013), and to establish limits of acceptable change (Havinga et al, 2019).…”

“…However, the literature shows that the existing sets of indicators are insufficient to ensure an adequate baseline assessment of heritage buildings to sustainability before conservation interventions (Gonçalves et al, 2021). This baseline assessment is of utmost importance to inform the future steps of design, with a balanced integration of environmental and cultural factors (Gonçalves et al, 2021;Appendino, 2018;Correia et al, 2013), and to establish limits of acceptable change (Havinga et al, 2019). According to practitioners, there are insufficient tools to support decision-making in built heritage conservation, and the existing tools and methodologies are too complex, difficult to access and very time-consuming (Gonçalves et al, 2019(Gonçalves et al, , 2021Perovic et al, 2016).…”

Proposal for a Methodology for Sustainable Rehabilitation Strategies of the Existing Building Stock—The Ponte Gêa Neighborhood

“…The evolution of the concepts of heritage and sustainability shows that they are related both in terms of their common scope and intention to preserve this ecosystem for future generations. A concise and previously tested methodology can be a useful tool for informing decision-making and ensuring that future impact assessments of the conservation of the built heritage have a basis for comparison [73].…”