Cultural valuable buildings and climate change responses in a user perspective

CulClim - Cultural valuable buildings and climate change in a user perspective, is an interdisciplinary research collaboration project between the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) and SINTEF Building and Infrastructure. CulClim is part of the research program "People's climate research". In this program, the Norwegian Research Council has asked the public to define research questions that they wanted climate researchers to answer: http://www.forskningsradet.no/prognettklimaforsk/Folkets_klimaforskning/1254008369561 The CulClim project focuses on cultural valuable buildings and climate change responses from a user perspective. Its overarching ambition is to generate knowledge on how society and the public can engage in challenges related to climate change, as well as to contribute to both mitigation and adaptation of historic buildings and environments. Together with the users, researchers from SINTEF and NIKU have investigated decisions processes for technical measures, and user related measures aiming at improving the climate adaptation and decreasing the users' climate impact and energy consumption. In order to identify relevant climate change strategies from a user perspective, the CulClim project provides a case study of an apartment building from around 1890 in an area with protected heritage buildings in Oslo, Norway. The building is in need of renovation to withstand the impacts of climate strain, with increasing temperatures and amounts of precipitation. However, the protection status of the buildings, the need for maintenance, legal framework and, feasibility, are some of several conflicting issues. Based on the building and the related issues, NIKU has developed a technical analysis pointing at different recommended measures that the residents are advised to deal with. This analysis/report is also based on an early survey that we did to map the needs of the residents when it comes to their building and apartments. Further, SINTEF has conducted focus groups and individual interviews with the residents in order to understand how they cope with their building, what their experiences with cultural heritage are, and their understandings of climate mitigation and adaptation strategies. Findings demonstrate that many Norwegians believe that energy efficiency is important regardless of cultural heritage status or building age. Our focus groups and interviews reveal that becoming aware of the meaning of the heritage status leads to confusion and insecurity among residents. The responsibility of finding information on renovation and sustainable renovation establish contact with the city cultural heritage authorities is the owners'. They do however find this difficult. There is a risk that mixed messages from different public bodies concerning sustainability (that do not necessarily consider heritage status), leave the residents incapable of action which again leads to building degradation. Further, our project reveals severe communication challenges between the public authorities' and the residents' perspectives, creating risks for degradation of historic buildings instead of sustainability. Physical building damage caused by technical building measures aiming at energy efficiency and climate adaptation is seen as a realistic threat to the cultural valuable building stock. Accordingly, we identify a need for more outreaching communication between the actors involved. Apparently, better cooperation between The Directorate for Cultural Heritage and ENOVA could result in easier access to information and less confusing advices for the residents. ENOVA's counselling service could also include advices for cultural heritage buildings or direct these queries to the Directorate for Cultural Heritage. We would also suggest that information strategies from ENOVA to the public should point to the fact that cultural heritage buildings are to be treated in different ways than buildings from 1950 and up. Based on the previously performed interviews, vi have developed the contents to a new guidance booklet. It has been quality assured/tested by a selection of potential users and is revised based on their input. The guidance booklet will be produced as a downloadable pdf file and presents a summary of some of the most important findings in the project.

Et direkte økt fokus hos beboere og styret i casestudien. Igangsatt utskifting av vinduer i den aktuelle vernede bygningen i samarbeid med byantikvaren i Oslo. Forventet virknin/effekt: økt fokus hos målgruppen, dvs. eiere, brukere beboere og styrer i sameier/borettlag i gamle/verneverdige bygårder. Vi forventer at prosjektet fører til økt/bedre samarbeid mellom ENOVA og antikvariske myndigheter.

The project will increase knowledge amongst the general public on mitigation and adaptation to climate change in culturally valuable building environments. This will be pursued through a user perspective, aiming at improving the climate adaptation of cult ural valuable buildings and decreasing the users' climate impact and energy consumption. The main focus will be on user behaviour and decision processes. The outcome of the project shall be plain, easy implementable climate adaptation and emission reducti on measures, with evident, measurable impact and effect, in cooperation with the attending general public. The theoretical framework is based on a multidisciplinary social science approach where science and technology are seen as social and cultural pract ices. The results will be based on action research and group interviews. The project will be divided into three work packages. 1) International perspectives: Describe and analyse climate mitigation and adaptation measures in a targeted culturally valuabl e building environment, in a model city with great transfer value to Oslo. Develop state of the art of pro-environmental behaviour related to culturally valuable buildings and related social and technical challenges. 2) National case, urban living lab, Grünerløkka: Mapping of climate change response related user behaviour in culturally valuable building environments in an "urban living lab". In interaction with the users: Find the best climate mitigation and adaptation measures, both technical and user related. Develop decision guidelines for the chosen measures (app, web site, booklet etc.). Test the recommended measures in the case study. 3) Dissemination and dissemination testing: The guidelines and decision tools will be tested on the users in the l iving lab before they will be spread to a broader public. The aim is also to make a TV-program. The researchers have an agreement about cooperation with the EU-project "Climate for Culture" and Uppsala university.