It is historically a fact that Turkey experiences frequent earthquakes, on the order of one damaging earthquake of magnitude 6–7 approximately every 2 years, causing extensive losses to economy, life and limb. Every strong earthquake leaves behind poverty and tens of thousands of homeless people. In order to mitigate especially the losses of life due to earthquakes, a rapid scoring technique called the P25 – Preliminary Assessment Method is proposed herein. The purpose of the method is to determine, for a reinforced concrete-framed building, whether there is any vulnerability to collapse during a strong earthquake. By identifying those buildings, which are most likely susceptible to collapse inside a particular building stock, and consequently strengthening or demolishing them, practically no loss of life will occur. In this presentation, details of P25 – Preliminary Assessment Method are discussed and the high degree of prediction reliability of the method is demonstrated on 323 case study buildings, which experienced wide ranges of damage during past earthquakes.
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EU president Ursula von der Leyen wants Europe to tap into its inner avant-garde. In her inaugural State of the Union speech from September 16, 2020, she pledged to revive the historical Bauhaus - the experimental art school that married artistic form with functional design, founded a century ago in Weimar, Germany. Their objective was to democratize the experience of aesthetics and design through affordable commodity objects for the masses. Today, the European Union sees a chance to create a new common aesthetic born out of a need to renovate and construct more energy-efficient buildings. “I want NextGenerationEU to kickstart a European renovation wave and make our Union a leader in the circular economy,” von der Leyen said. The new Bauhaus is not just an environmental or economic project, “it needs to be a new cultural project for Europe. Every movement has its own look and feel. And we need to give our systemic change its own distinct aesthetic—to match style with sustainability. This is why we will set up a New European Bauhaus—a co-creation space where architects, artists, students, engineers, designers work together to make that happen. This is shaping the world we want to live in. A world served by an economy that cuts emissions, boosts competitiveness, reduces energy poverty, creates rewarding jobs and improves quality of life. A world where we use digital technologies to build a healthier, greener society.”
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Masonry structures comprise a significant portion of the historical building stock all over the world. Previousstudies have clearly pointed out that unreinforced masonry buildings are vulnerable against extreme loadingconditions, such as seismic actions. Therefore, strengthening is inevitable in most cases for historical masonry towithstand severe loads. In this paper, the efficiency of fabric reinforced cementitious matrix is investigatedexperimentally by using diagonal tension tests. Fourteen wallets with a nominal size of 750x750x235 mm wereproduced with using solid clay bricks and a low-strength mortar. The bricks were collected from the structuralwalls of an early-20th century building under restoration. The low-strength mortar represents the historicalmortar commonly used in similar historical brick masonry buildings located in Istanbul, Turkey. By testing thespecimens under monotonic diagonal compression loads, the effects of different types of plasters on the walletsurface, varying types of fibers used in textile reinforcement and anchors used for the connection between FRCMand substrate are investigated. Although the wallet samples have inherent shortcomings in representing overallcomponent response accurately, still the qualitative findings are enlightening the effectiveness of the FRCMsystem by increasing shear strength, stiffness (shear modulus) and dissipated energy of the masonry wallets. Thestrengthened specimens were failed due to shear sliding along a bed joint and/or by a stair-shaped separationwhile the refence specimens were failed due to the splitting of the specimen into two parts in the stair-steppedshape and a slipping through a bed joint.
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The energy transition is a highly complex technical and societal challenge, coping with e.g. existing ownership situations, intrusive retrofit measures, slow decision-making processes and uneven value distribution. Large scale retrofitting activities insulating multiple buildings at once is urgently needed to reach the climate targets but the decision-making of retrofitting in buildings with shared ownership is challenging. Each owner is accountable for his own energy bill (and footprint), giving a limited action scope. This has led to a fragmented response to the energy retrofitting challenge with negligible levels of building energy efficiency improvements conducted by multiple actors. Aggregating the energy design process on a building level would allow more systemic decisions to happen and offer the access to alternative types of funding for owners. “Collect Your Retrofits” intends to design a generic and collective retrofit approach in the challenging context of monumental areas. As there are no standardised approaches to conduct historical building energy retrofits, solutions are tailor-made, making the process expensive and unattractive for owners. The project will develop this approach under real conditions of two communities: a self-organised “woongroep” and a “VvE” in the historic centre of Amsterdam. Retrofit designs will be identified based on energy performance, carbon emissions, comfort and costs so that a prioritisation strategy can be drawn. Instead of each owner investing into their own energy retrofitting, the neighbourhood will invest into the most impactful measures and ensure that the generated economic value is retained locally in order to make further sustainable investments and thus accelerating the transition of the area to a CO2-neutral environment.
Gebouwd en landschappelijk erfgoed zijn van groot belang voor de kwaliteit en identiteit van de leefomgeving. Hoe houden we ons erfgoed in stand, ook in het licht van grote ruimtelijke transities? Hoe kunnen erfgoedwaarden inzetten als inspiratiebronnen bij deze ruimtelije transities? Onderzoekers Maarten Vieveen en Tineke van der Schoor doen onderzoek naar deze aspecten. Regelmatig wordt samengewerkt met eindgebruikers (inwoners, beheerders en passanten), erfgoedinstellingen en overheiden.Het koepelproject Duurzaam Erfgoed heeft een belangrijke impuls gekregen door het RAAK-project Energieke Restauraties (2011-2013) en het Living Lab Erfgoed in Energietransitie van RVO (2020-2021). In deze projecten werd speciaal aandacht besteed aan het perspectief van de eindgebruiker, erfgoedwaarden, energiereductie en energieopwekking.
