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THE ENERGY FUTURE OF EXISTING BUILDINGS IN BRUSSELS: BETWEEN PRESERVATION AND PERFORMANCE

a terrace, the Living rooms have windows both at the top and at the bottom of the wall. Van Der Meeren uses functional architecture which he brings to life with the use of art and colour (fig. 7, 8 and 9).

The final three characteristics typical of Van Der Meeren are “modulation”, “prefabrication” and “standardisation”. These relate to the intensive use of modulation in order to make prefabrication and standardisation possible. For this he used the Modulor. Even the arches are custom made with a width of 57.5 cm, or half a module.

CONDITION OF THE BUILDING UPON START OF WORKS

The first problem, and one of the most significant, was linked to the building physics. According to information received from the Housing Association, for the majority of the residents energy costs were higher than rental costs. The façade was built using sandwich panels - 5 cm concrete on the exterior and 5 cm concrete on the interior with a thin 2 cm insulation layer in between - and thus had very limited thermal resistance. The façade panels were hung up in the structure; as a result the structure runs from the interior to the exterior in the façade and large thermal cold bridges are created via the structure.

A second difficulty in the building was fire safety. According to the letter of the law there are too few emergency staircases because they are placed 57 m from each other (it should be 60 m). There was also no compartmenting between the emergency staircases and the lifts, thus (as a high-rise building) both had to be equipped with an airlock. Some apartments had direct access to the stairwells.

The apartments are not compart-mented in regard to circulation and the structure does not have a fire resistance of two hours, which in this case applies to the arches above all. The final important point is that the fire spread criterion in the façade is insufficient. Normally, there must be a zone with a development of one metre in length and a fire resistance of one hour, both between two floors and between two apartments (i.e. both horizontally and vertically).

In addition, the technical installations were antiquated. There was no ventilation system installed into the building. The acoustic problems are obvious when considering the construction method: problems with noise transfer via the communal technical shafts; problems with contact noise throughout the entire structure; far too few absorbent surfaces; and too little mass between adjoining apartments.

A final problem was the very limited height of the apartments. In figure 11 you can see that the height from the finished floor to the bottom of the arches is exactly 2.5 m. The measured height between the bottom of the doorways and the finished floor is 2 m. There is therefore very little room for providing technical or other equipment as the screed is only 7 cm thick and is located on the arches. The screeds and the arches do not work together, making the screed extra weigh on the arches.

In order to gain a more in-depth knowledge of the construction and condition of the tower block, a series of probes, prototypes and mockups were carried out. These included dismantling a façade panel to see just how that panel was installed, whether it was easy to dismantle and to better understand the panel's composition. Research into the condition of the concrete was carried out (there is quite a lot of visible concrete present). The composition of the roof, the floors and the existing brickwork were examined. Additional research was carried out regarding the fire safety of the stairs and additional measurements taken relating to the structure of the entire building to determine the correct dimensions of the façade panelling. Many acoustic measurements were taken as this was an important factor in living comfort. Research into the building's lateral stability was also needed.

The most important themes for the renovation philosophy of the project were as follows: to design a comfortable layout for the apartments with a particular focus on the communal spaces and a façade that meets the EPB requirements, all achieved with respect for the characteristics summarised above.

THE PROGRAMME

The building originally consisted of 105 homes. They have since been turned into 103 apartments, and to optimise living comfort all of the three-bedroom apartments were converted into two-bedroom apartments. Regarding energy performance, the result is a global K level of K30 and an E level of E80 per home. To improve acoustics and fire safety, all floors and ceilings were fitted with insulating acoustic materials. This caused the loss of the building's internal thermal inertia. Despite the brand new façade, overheating in the summer period remained a problem. Due to this, a number of windows had to be sacrificed, mainly in the bedrooms. Exterior sun protection was also placed on every top window.



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