The future of yesterday’s concrete utopias: postwar concrete architecture, energy intensive construction materials, and cultural heritage as a tool for sustainability efforts

The extensive renovation and energy efficiency needs that today exist within parts of the post-war building stock bring to the fore both questions about the energy once needed to produce these environments and the cultural-historical values that potentially exist in them.

This evidently applies to concrete, a material both intimately associated with post-war architecture, and whose production involves extensive greenhouse gas emissions.

Based on a study of ongoing efforts to improve energy efficiency and extend the life span of concrete architecture, we aim to highlight the kinds of historical knowledge used, or potentially usable, to avoid unnecessary demolition of climate-burdening architecture.

We partly do this through studies of contemporary cases where circular efforts can reuse concrete on site, but also through a historical investigation of building techniques previously used, and how these leave a material heritage today shaping strategies for sustainable energy-efficiency.