• Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage
• Publications close
• 13. Climate action close
• Sustainability close

The control of air quality in museums or storages is of fundamental interest for the conservation of historic artifacts. The present work reports an example of application of RFID sensors developed in the European project SensMat and dedicated to this issue. The sensors are based on the variation of property of an RFID tag coupled with a sensitive silver thin film exposed to the environment. As it will be described in the paper, such low-cost sensors are interrogated by a commercial reader and provide the environmental corrosivity index and thus the presence of pollutants. The selected case study concerns the monitoring of pollution by H2S in a building dedicated to conservation and restoration of archeological and historical woods. The ability of sensors to map spatially the corrosivity within buildings is highlighted.

Cultural heritage drives and enables sustainable urban development. The adaptive reuse of cultural heritage creates values while prolonging the lifespan of heritage. Similarly, circular economy creates value while extending the useful life of materials and elements through their reuse. Existing studies on adaptive reuse challenges seldom focus on cultural heritage properties, and they are often identified through the engagement of a limited variety of stakeholders, as compared to the actors normally involved in adaptive reuse. Filling this gap, this paper provides a preliminary baseline of challenges faced by the city of Amsterdam from the perspective of various involved stakeholders, and suggests solutions to address them. The participants represented the public, private, knowledge, and third sectors. The methods used were the following: for data collection, a multidisciplinary workshop using the steps of the Historic Urban Landscape approach as an assessment framework applied to multiple scales on adaptive reuse, and for data analysis, manifest content analysis. The results expanded the range of challenges and solutions reported by previous literature on the adaptive reuse of cultural heritage in content and scale by identifying 61 themes—e.g., knowledge and civic engagement. Tools and stakeholders were also identified. These findings provide a reference for future practice, policymaking, and decision-making, facilitating the adaptive reuse of cultural heritage to capitalize on its potential for sustainable development and circular economy. Architectural Engineering +Technology

Cultural heritage (CH) is considered a key element of cities and regions’ identity anduniqueness, contributing to people's wellbeing and health, as well as jobs creation, environmentalregeneration and place attractiveness. The adaptive reuse of abandoned and underused CH can be asustainable strategy for heritage conservation, stimulating local development processes. However,heritage conservation needs large investments, while the resources available are scarce, and invest-ment projects are subject to high uncertainties. Therefore, a careful assessment of impacts is neededto orient and direct CH adaptive reuse projects towards sustainability. Recent studies approach theadaptive reuse of abandoned buildings and sites as an effective circular economy strategy, potentiallycontributing to climate objectives through environmental regeneration and the reduction of naturalresources consumption. However, evaluation tools to assess the impacts and orient adaptive reuseinterventions in the perspective of circularity are lacking. Through the analysis of 76 literature sourceson CH impacts, this article explores how indicators are currently used in CH research and practice asimpact assessment tools. More than 3500 indicators were retrieved and classified. Finally, this articleproposes a comprehensive evaluation framework to assess the impacts of cultural heritage adaptivereuse in the perspective of the circular economy. The results show that, while some indicators areavailable, many circularity aspects are not considered in the current studies on CH impacts.

Cultural heritage is recognized as a driver and enabler for sustainable development, and its role within the circular economy and circular cities is gaining attention. Its adaptive reuse plays a significant role in this while prolonging the heritage lifespan, preserving the values associated with heritage assets, and creating shared values. The adoption and implementation of the adaptive reuse of cultural heritage practices present challenges at multiple levels. This research aims to identify these challenges and propose solutions to overcome them, considering the post-industrial port city of Rijeka, Croatia, as a case study. The adaptive reuse of cultural heritage practices was assessed through a stakeholder engagement workshop performing a multi-scale analysis using the Historic Urban Landscape approach as an assessment framework. Forty-nine themes were identified by content analysis of the challenges and solutions identified by stakeholders involved in adaptive reuse practices and decision-making in the city. The five most mentioned themes refer to aspects relating to participation, capacity, regulatory systems, economics-finance, and knowledge. These findings provide evidence of challenges for policy-and decision-makers to be addressed in policy-making. Solutions are also suggested to facilitate the adaptive reuse of cultural heritage in the city of Rijeka and similar contexts, such as introducing policies to support participatory decision-making whose absence is a barrier. Architectural Engineering +Technology

By referring to the European Green Deal, this paper analyzes the “intrinsic value” of cultural heritage by investigating the human-centered adaptive reuse of this heritage. This implies questions such as how to improve the effectiveness of reuse, restoration, and valorization interventions on cultural heritage/landscapes and how to transform a cultural asset into a place, interpreted as a living ecosystem, to be managed as a living organism. The autopoietic characteristic of the eco-bio-systems, specifically focusing on the intrinsic versus instrumental values of cultural heritage ecosystem is discussed in detail. Specifically, the notion of complex social value is introduced to express the above integration. In ecology, the notion of intrinsic value (or “primary value”) relates to the recognition of a value that “pre-exists” any exploitation by human beings. The effectiveness of transforming a heritage asset into a living ecosystem is seen to follow from an integration of these two values. In this context, the paper provides an overview of the different applications of the business model concept in the circular economy, for a better investment decision-making and management in heritage adaptive reuse. Matera case is presented as an example of a cultural heritage ecosystem. To conclude, recommendations toward an integrated approach in managing the adaptive reuse of heritage ecosystem as a living organism are proposed.

A new movement in urban environmental policy, the circular economy (CE), aims to change how Europeans consume and produce materials and energy. Cities are taking up the CE challenge. This research inquires whether the infant CE programs in European cities include cultural heritage and adaptive reuse of cultural heritage (ARCH) buildings. ARCH buildings exemplify the central principal of the CE, which is a temporally long service life with multiple uses for several generations of users. In addition, culture and cultural heritage buildings are established drivers of socioeconomic development, urban landscape, and identity. Hypothetically, cultural heritage and adaptive reuse of cultural heritage (ARCH) buildings should be prominently included in European cities’ CE programs, particularly those cities that are highly ranked on the 2019 European Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor (Monitor). To test this hypothesis, this study creates a novel dataset that profiles the existing circular city plans of 190 European cities included in the Monitor’s ranking. Contrary to the hypothesis, just seven percent of cities in the dataset include cultural heritage. European cities are missing an opportunity to achieve their CE goals and preserve their unique identities as embodied in the built environment.

Focusing on the uncertainties of climate change and its effects on the built environment, on the energy responsibilities of residential building stock and on the dichotomy between the transformation and preservation of cultural heritage with a long-term perspective, this paper proposes a detailed methodology aimed at managing energy retrofit transformations and preservation actions in historic districts following “resilience thinking.” The proposed methodology pursues the traditional process of retrofitting for cultural heritage, and identifies—on building and component scales—a structural process aimed at: (i) recognizing and testing the adaptive qualities of traditional built constructions to climate change based upon the genius loci experience (iii) identifying and managing improvement requirements according to priority levels of transformation (MUERI). The test on a representative case study in the south of Italy (Mediterranean area) highlighted some significant results: (i) the importance of compactness and of light-colored materials in fighting local microclimate alterations (iii) the reduction into a limited number of buildings cases to assess, solving the complex and various combinations of features, with which suitable solutions and guidelines are associated. (ii) the pivotal responsibility of roofs in current and future trends in energy consumption, promoting and testing both innovative and traditional solutions (ii) diagnosing critical energy emergencies which occurred due to historical transformations or exposure to criticalities of climate change