Thermal Retrofitting for Built Heritage in Scotland: Managing Change, Negotiating Values, Overcoming Barriers.
Subject: Heritage
School: School of History, Heritage and Politics
Supervisors: Dr Vanika Arora,  Professor Siân Jones, Simon Stronach (Historic Environment Scotland).
Discipline+Catalyst:Â Law, Literature, Cultural and Museum Studies, History
Knowledge Exchange Hub: Heritage
Keywords:Â Built heritage, users, thermal retrofitting, climate change, sustainability, heritage valuesÂ
About Lena’s Research:
Built heritage is considered part of the solution to mitigating climate change through repair, adaptive reuse and retrofitting practices. Despite a wide acknowledgement of the substantial benefits of thermal retrofitting practices for built heritage and the growing number of technical guidance, statements and policies recommending retrofit interventions for sustainability, systematic research on how users of built heritage in Scotland make decisions between energy efficiency and thermal comfort is limited and case-specific.
Collaborating with the partner organisation Historic Environment Scotland, this research project looks into what thermal retrofitting means for users of built heritage in Scotland. Using a participatory action research approach and working with residents, communities, organisations, heritage professionals and the building industry, the project considers the factors impacting the decision-making of various actors involved in the ecology of retrofit and how these might apply to designated and non-designated built heritage.
