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

other tenants on the housing waiting list, forcing them to have to wait even Longer. She felt that the building ought to be renovated while the site was still occupied.

This initial phase of the study therefore enabled the Molenbeek Housing Company as well as the Municipal Council to adopt a position definitively in favour of renovation rather than demolition.

The second phase consisted of using common sense to examine what could be optimised in the existing structure. The underlying logic was that of improvement and not compliance with standards. This approach was not favoured by the Brussels Region Housing Company (SLRB), which had no choice but to comply with standards - no exceptions. However, Anne Lacaton didn't give up: it was first necessary to determine how the existing structure could be improved, otherwise any renovation operation would have been pointless. Her firm also worked on the human element: the teams visited the families in each apartment in order to study situations of overcrowding or under-occupation. This enabled them to discover, for instance, that a bedroom intended for one child was actually used for three even though, in other apartments, certain rooms were unoccupied as the children had grown up and no longer lived there. This method showed that by simply optimising the distribution of residents within the tower, via internal movements, much could already be achieved.

Significant technical considerations were also involved. The firm proposed fireproofing and protecting the structure, making the cores fireproof, adding sprinklers to areas where fire resistance

SOME FIGURES:

Footprint381 m2
Total surface area6482 m2
Number of apartments97
Number of residents242
Consumption179 kWh/m2/year
Average heating cost456 euros/year; 38 euros/month
Base rentsFrom 175 to 324 euros/month
Actual rents122 to 227 euros/month

Fig. 6 to 12

The apartments are bright with a window in each room. The flat roof offers a panoramic view over the city (© Lacaton & Vassal).



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