A history of dealing with a cold damp climate. And now change is coming.
snip
...
“Our biggest challenge is our existing buildings,” says Julie Hirigoyen, CEO of the United Kingdom Green Building Council. “And in the U.K. our homes are some of the draftiest and leakiest across most of Europe.” But choices made to protect from the cold can also trap the heat. Many find themselves living in spaces ill-equipped for either season. There is, says Hirigoyen, “a huge piece of work to be done” when it comes to retrofitting local architecture for both hot and cold weather.
Much of this country’s housing stock was built more than a century ago, and too much of it built poorly and unsustainably. And there are enormous inequities in British housing, creating social fissures that will be exacerbated this coming winter as people deal with soaring fuel prices. But an architectural tour of this country’s houses — from grand iconic structures, like the Elizabethan Hardwick Hall to more modest Victorian Terrace homes and modern tower blocks — suggests that the lessons learned over the centuries about how to deal with the harsh realities of weather may apply today. As one advocate for making older structures more sustainable says, “Buildings are vessels and we’ve forgotten how to sail these ships.”
...
Comments