Your chance to get involved! In response to the post/tweet “How would you promote small, attached, prototypical, adaptable buildings to build safe, convenient, enduring, beautiful urban neighborhoods?” loyal reader Joseph Heathcott replied: “You can go a long distance with a green argument. In this vein, you might like this study being undertaken by the Green Lab of the National Trust, which is geared toward assessing the environmental performance of small building typologies.”
I emailed the manager of the study, Ric Cochrane, who graciously replied: “You ask a question that hits the nail on the head, that is one of our reasons for being.” From the study website: “The Preservation Green Lab of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, in partnership with colleges and universities across the county, is conducting a national survey of older, smaller buildings as part of a major national initiative to increase the rate of building energy retrofits and thereby encourage adaptive reuse of existing buildings.”
“The focus of the survey is on commercial and mixed-use buildings smaller than 50,000 square feet. ‘Small’ commercial buildings represent 95% of the existing building stock but are largely overlooked in the energy retrofit market. New technical tools and finance mechanisms are needed to reach small buildings.
“The New Buildings Institute’s energy retrofit experience indicates that rules of thumb apply to certain categories of building typologies. The goal of the survey is to provide owners of small buildings with easily accessible strategies.” NTHP blog post here. You can sign up to be a building surveyor! Join today, and tell your classmates, professors, and other neighbors!
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