Victoria Sustainable Preservation Symposium, Co-Chaired by Goody Clancy’s Lisa Howe
Even preservationists and sustainability professionals don’t always grasp the power of historic preservation as a sustainability strategy. Intent on highlighting the connection between the two, 80 historic preservation practitioners from around the globe attended the Sustainable Preservation Symposium in Victoria, British Columbia, on October 11-12, a prelude to the Association for Preservation Technology International (APT) annual conference. Participants represented contractors, architects, engineers, conservators, and academicians working in government agencies, educational institutions, not-for-profits, and private practices on three continents. Read More
APT’s Technical Committee on Sustainable Preservation (TCSP) organized the symposium, co-chaired by Lisa Howe, LEED, a Principal at Goody Clancy, to explore the technical issues associated with improving the sustainability of historic buildings. The organization has championed a wider understanding of the connection between preservation and sustainability. Heritage buildings often embody remarkable pre-industrial systems for adapting to climate and to human needs. By the same token, interventions with new sustainability technology can significantly increase a building’s efficiency without altering its appearance. The symposium was conceived as a way of building on technical preservation expertise, APT’s calling card, through further refinement of a Sustainable Preservation Decision-Making Matrix that TCSP has been working to develop. ATP intends the matrix to function as a Web-based tool to help answer the multiple and interacting questions raised by “energy upgrades” of historic buildings. By identifying gaps in resources and predicting the impact of alternate strategies, the interactive matrix would help practitioners around the globe find ways to produce maximum energy efficiency while maintaining the integrity of historic buildings.
Day 1 of the symposium comprised a series of presentations by experts in sustainable preservation. Sue Roaf, professor of architectural engineering at Heriot Watt University, gave the keynote, ““How Traditional & Historic Building Technologies Can Inform New Design.” Patrice Frey, director of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Sustainability Program, talked about the work being done by the Preservation Green Lab in her talk "Better Outcomes for Older Buildings." Roger Curtis, technical research manager at Historic Scotland Conservation Group, described “Carbon-Reduction Measures that Impact Historic Buildings.” John Diodati, architect at Fournier Gersovitz Moss Drolet et associés architectes, presented a case study update on the Ottawa Parliament buildings in which he described the testing his firm undertook to understand the performance of the existing mass masonry walls.
With some of the best minds in the business assembled for the symposium, a series of working sessions on Day 2 focused on refining the Decision-Making Matrix. Break-out groups spent the day analyzing and adding to the draft tool in four categories: Whole Building Ecology; Roof; Walls; and Windows. TCSP will continue to refine and develop the matrix for at least another year, with a final release date to be announced.