PRACTICING FACADE RENOVATION OF DANISH BUILDINGS BUILT BETWEEN 1960 AND 1980

Practising building facade renovation in Denmark, both from the technical and aesthetic points of view, raises many questions that are presented in this paper. These questions are answered and discussed through interviews conducted with seven architectural firms that are involved with façade renovation of buildings built in the sixties and the seventies of the last century. These buildings function as offices, institutional or residential buildings, but the majority of the studied cases comprise residential buildings.
The same twenty-five questions, prepared in advance, were asked to all the interviewees. These questions focused on technical, aesthetic, functional, economic and environmental aspects. The results of the interviews show that there are many problems facing these buildings, for example, energy efficiency, durability and indoor climate problems. The process of treating these problems is analysed and the interviews reveal whether an integrated design process was carried out in an ideal way among the different actors, or if problems occurred among them. The aesthetic approach was discussed in the interviews to determine the way decisions were taken regarding cladding materials and facade component dimensions, including the possibility of making some enlargements and possibly including some planting on the facades. The interviews discussed strategies for the renovation as defined by the engineers, such as using external re-insulation to improve the energy efficiency of the building or using other possible strategies such as internal re-insulation.



The physical aspects of the renovation, e.g. window area and orientation, air tightness of the envelope, solar heat gain, material recycling and insulation, and especially daylight optimisation inside the building were focused on in the interviews.
The interviews with the architectural firms were able to answer the questions regarding the building owners’ concerns and showed the way the architectural firms either reacted to these concerns to provide concepts and strategies like external re-insulation, or followed a specific process such as integrated design to provide the final solution.