oops sorry I was looking for the grad school thread....please continue.

rationalist, specific to installing solar panels on a historic building roof: it's nice to minimize their appearance, if possible, without doing something like an ugly "screen wall" that just draws attention to itself. But when I see solar panels on a roof I tend to view them with the same kind of smart-coolness as I view bike riders wearing helmets. (When I see helmetless riders, I think "organ donor!" aka probably not real smart.)

If they are obviously NOT part of the original structure, no need to really "pretty them up".

ADA ramps, on he other hand, tend to really muck up the front of a historic house. That's a hard thing to do well.

I think so long as the integrety of the architecture can be maintained, historic preservation and sustainability are a perfect fit. What could be more sustainable than preserving an existing building, as opposed to demo and starting from scratch? While most (if not all) historic buildings will never be anywhere in the neighborhood of zero-energy, why not use any system possible to make the building more sustainable? While I wouldn't propose putting a wind turbine on the Chrysler Building, I think there are things that can be done to reduce its impact, like photovoltaics, low-VOC paints, and a greywater system.

Good question, rationalist.

I think that there are many ways to incorporate "green" building technologies into a historic building. After all, the two concepts are similar.....to preserve and conserve as much as possible. It's in the interest of a green designer to save a historic building, because that means that you are not creating more construction materials or waste.....and although I rarely come at design problems from a "preservationist" standpoint, I'd have to think it was in the interest of a historic preservationist to update a historic building and make it usable.

I feel like we kind of danced around this issue with the Breuer charrette.....how do you take a historically significant piece of design and update it?

I suppose it's tougher when you have something with, for example, a dominant roof line and you want to put PV panels on it. I wonder then if you can't explore alternate methods for renewable energy generation....

Looks like we were thinking the same things at the same times!

LB, when you say "muck up," do you mean like this?

That's definitely mucked up, Chili, but at least it's not cast in place!

(Those doors, jeepers....the most beautiful ever.)

haha, yeah, the ADA ramps can be a bitch. But yeah- from a preservation standpoint, would it be a no-no to put solar panels on the south side of the (steep, very visible) roof of a historic building, which covered the original shake roof, or the compatible yet fire-retardant replacement to the original shake roof?

I'm trying to think what else there is in sustainable practice that's super-visible like that, but am drawing a blank.

i hear ge will be showing their entry for the thin solar shingles at an exhibit in l.a. a few weeks from now! while i think these are available in some places, they're not readily available yet. can't wait to put these things on my 1910 house!

but then i'm also in favor of small wind turbines in urban neighborhoods.

What point is there in preserving any historic building if there's no future to preserve them for?

PV on the roof seems ok to me. I'm sure people were outraged when people first put cooling towers on old buildings but they somehow got over it. A lot of old buildings had cisterns, rainwater recovery, etc. that were disabled when modern plumbing came in. They probably could be reactivated. As for paint, if we were really trying to be historically correct we'd be using lead paint but we can't anymore...so low VOC is fine.

Personally, I find historic buildings with high efficiency HVAC systems, PV and solar H2O panels on the roof, new high performance windows, and original siding hiding high performance wall assemblies to be sexy as hell.

I think all too often the desire to preserve something of historic significance turns into a desire to stop time.

I work for a historic property developer; we just completed a Silver upfit (LEED-CI) in a beautiful old building. A successful adaptive reuse/historic renovation project and a successful sustainable project are in no way mutually exclusive.

In examining what is lacking efficiency-wise in an older building, the building shells themselves are surprisingly energy efficient; the thick masonry walls have excellent insulating properties, the placement (and frequency) of large, operable windows provide natural cross ventilation and abundant natural light, and the masonry/timber construction methods used to construct many old buildings provide a structure that will have a lifecycle far superior to today’s buildings.

Instead, it is the old building systems that are inefficient. This is the crux of why a successful historic building renovation can also be such a successful LEED project; the aspects of a historic building that give it character (solid masonry walls, tall windows, etc.) are the same things that make it sustainable. We simply upgrade the building systems to account for that, which is part of any routine historic renovation anyway.

snark- your historical buildings are very different from mine. Historic buildings here are circa 1900 (give or take a bit) mining houses made of wood, many of which were relocated at least once from surrounding communities as mines opened and closed. Many have also been previously reused as parts of buildings have been joined with parts of other buildings to create new layouts, all of this years before being declared part of a National Historical Register District.

In many cases, these buildings have survived 100 years of Rocky Mountain winters without any insulation or moisture control. The only thing which prevented serious condensation and mold problems in these houses is that they are extremely drafty, and as a result spent their winters being OVERheated with wood stoves. Local historic preservation/ architectural review boards are at odds with local building officials when the former refuses to allow the removal of siding and/or replacement of historic windows and the latter requires compliance with newer building codes. These houses are retrofitted with vapor barriers and insulation from the inside, and if not detailed properly you can rot a proud 100 year old structure to the ground in less than 15 years. All of this after hanging the whole structure in the air long enough to build a foundation under it.

whoa, I'm rambling.... anyhow we're lifting one of these this spring, I'll post pictures in the jobsite pic thread

Yeah, the one I had in mind when I posted this is a 110 year old colonial revival that used to house a large family and their servants, but now houses architecture students. Due to funding issues, it's very important to stay within the approved boundaries of historic preservation, but I thought the PV service linked to in the 'earth day' thread sounded great and wondered whether it would fly. It's also wooden and drafty, but fortunately just got a new roof, so it's at least no longer leaky!

Maybe what we need is to redefine sustainability. Maybe environmental sustainability needs to go hand in hand with cultural sustainability, and *economic* sustainability as well, since nothing (no environmental or preservation strategy) is truely sustainable unless it is also economically sustainable...

Adaptive reuse, but also, when implementing sustainable strategies in historic preservation, make those sustainable strategies work to bring added economic value to the building you want to preserve. Upgrade the building for a new use, give it new life, make it sustain itself, make it consume less energy, preserve it, and reduce waste. That's true sustainability, not just token gesture.

Because, preserving / restoring a building requires continual maintenance costs, money and energy input, and environmentally sustainable solutions are an up front investment as well, they are not cheap, so they require an expected return on that investment that IMO is only possible if ingenuity is emphasized to bring market value to the building (while preserving some of its history and memory). The key to any kind of real sustainable strategy is to link that desired criteria to some real economic value. That means salesmanship as much as focused intent...