From "Baukultur" to "Umbaukultur"

Project description

This research project aims to identify the unconscious cultural and behavioural programmes that often determine and hinder the successful implementation of conversion projects. We will explore the roots of the prevailing replacement and throw-away culture and its expression in economic fundamentals, legal frameworks and standards. We will also evaluate the serious negative environmental consequences of this highly unsustainable culture. We want to understand why we consistently fail to do the right thing, and how an alternative attitude of care and repair can be established in the building sector.

The building sector is responsible for a large proportion of overall carbon emissions, the destruction of natural habitats, the depletion of resources – and the amount of waste that must be absorbed by the environment. Only a fundamental change in the way we deal with existing buildings can change this and move us towards meeting international and national climate goals. The rate of modernisation is far too low to significantly reduce the CO2 impact. This is largely because renovation costs are often similar or even higher than for new construction, due to "wrong" targets and modernisation strategies that follow standards developed for new buildings. We need a new set of rules and frameworks that aim for minimal intervention and reasonable savings, rather than setting targets that do more harm than good. This requires a fundamental cultural shift from a wasteful culture of replacement to one of continuous care and repair.

Project implementation

The objective of this research is to construct a picture of our origins, our present situation and the potential for an alternative future and culture. The combined social anthropological, economic and legal research will identify and describe the foundations for a new "Umbaukultur" (a culture of care and repair). We will identify which laws, regulations, standards and conditions should be changed or implemented to encourage or enforce this. The aim is for our research to become a manual for policy and decision makers on how to make our society truly more sustainable and less wasteful. It should also become a handbook for architects, engineers and clients on how to identify the "right thing to do" with existing buildings. We will develop plausible narratives that draw on existing roots and traces of an alternative culture of care and repair, and clarify what we need to change in today's behaviours and processes to create an alternative culture in which it is completely natural to preserve, maintain and integrate what already exists.