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maintenance, refurb & heritage conservation


can lessons learned from traditional building benefit modern sustainable new builds and renovations?


Niall Crosson, Group Technical Director at Ecological Building Systems, draws on 25 years’ industry experience to make the case for ‘Building Better’, learning from traditional building practices and applying those principles to contemporary structures and sustainable refurbishments...


For architects, contractors and specifiers working towards net zero, the temptation is often to look forward – to new products, new techniques and new materials engineered for airtightness and thermal efficiency. But some of the most reliable performance data on sustainable building already exists, embedded in structures that have stood for two to three hundred years. Traditional buildings were solving problems of comfort, moisture management and durability long before embodied carbon or U-values entered the conversation and the


principles behind them have a direct impact on how we design, retrofit and specify today. When it comes to buildings, it is important


to recognise the fundamental truth – those that respect climate, material and place tend to outperform buildings that don’t, regardless of the era they were built in. For specifiers working on retrofit, extension or genuinely sustainable new-build, traditional construction offers more than heritage value. It offers a working model.


Vapour-open construction as a design principle Traditional masonry buildings, constructed from stone or brick and lime mortar, were built to manage moisture through evaporation, not exclusion. Walls were designed to absorb and release moisture cyclically, keeping the structure dry over time. This is the opposite operating principle to much of modern impermeable construction, which is designed to keep moisture out entirely.


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