Innovating built heritage: Adapt the past for the future

The contemporary worldwide targets towards sustainability, especially when regarding the building sector, have been guiding many researchers and technicians through the development of new challenges in the building industry. Many outlines came throughout, but mostly considering new buildings, where new technologies as well as new materials did not have to deal with a pre-existent environment.
With a large scale of urbanized areas, from past and present generations, we face an entire stock of resources that has been underestimated, by society and consequently by their social actors. This same stock of resources embodies different buildings, technologies and materials, mostly designed without any predetermined lifespan and built without giving much importance for the service life of their spaces, structures, and materials.
Re-Architecture: Lifespan rehabilitation of built heritage is a PhD research surveying a conscious way of intervening in the existing stock, taking into account all the necessary aspects of the building process, from pre-design, design, construction, use, further interventions and demolition, considering in advance the reuse or recycle of all included materials. Born as a concept in 2002, such research is now under development in the BTO Department, Eindhoven University of Technology, orientated by Prof. Ir. Jouke Post and Dr. Ir. Peter Erkelens.