Heritage & Architecture

Heritage & Architecture envisions that future societal needs for shelter cannot be met by predominantly creating new buildings. Instead, we need to give priority to the valuable buildings that we inherited from previous generations. In this regard, one of the biggest challenges in architecture will be the conservation and reuse of existing buildings, sustaining their future by adapting them to future needs in terms of identity, functionality, comfort, and energy consumption.

The mission of Heritage & Architecture is to grow knowledge and educate new generations that creatively redesign heritage, listed and unlisted, respecting its values recognised by society – and raise its future functional use and its sustainability, by smartly matching and developing the adequate, innovative technology and materials for heritage conservation and by maximising the positive impact for both the people and the planet.

The notion to look at all buildings as a valuable resource (100% heritage) instead of only focussing on the single, most relevant ones (heritage-designated buildings) challenges our society, architectural and engineering practice, and academia to deal with new questions regarding significance assessment, condition assessment, authenticity, preservation, use of materials, spatial quality, comfort, and reuse. These questions need to be addressed with methods and approaches from engineering, design, ethics and social sciences and have their origin in a long tradition of heritage conservation.