Conference Session at CHNT 30
03-05 November, 2025 @ Vienna, Austria
The SINCERE project hosts a special conference session at CHNT 30 ICOMOS Vienna. The call for papers is available here.
Innovation in Sustainable Restoration of Cultural Heritage Buildings
Today, sustainable and resource-efficient innovative solutions are available to improve the energy performance of cultural heritage buildings. Research in new materials and technological solutions in prevention, monitoring, management, maintenance, renovation and optimization of cultural heritage buildings aim towards reducing the carbon footprint and improving the energy performance of historic buildings. Through innovative, sustainable, and cost-effective restoration materials and practices, energy harvesting technologies, ICT tools and socially innovative approaches, embarrassing environmental and social sustainability, strive towards the net zero-carbon buildings EU targets for 2030 and 2050.
This session organizers invites researchers and experts to share research, outcomes, programs and solutions in several countries, climates and scales: from material, to building, to neighborhood, to city-scale.
Contributions should include in their considerations: 1) the full-service life of the buildings, from restoration, operation, monitoring and maintenance 2) the energy performance in terms of retrofitting materials and solutions optimized according to the buildings’ unique structural, architectural, functional and materials characteristics, and 3) the environmental, urban and social context, and future climate change scenarios that may affect the building and its performance.
Proposed solutions might be applied on building parts - structure, external envelope and transparent parts, but also address wider social, scientific and technological processes.
We particularly encourage the presentation of ICT tools that facilitate complex decision making, the engagement of a diversity of stakeholders in the renovation process, and the combination of engineering with social aspects.
Motivation
Cultural heritage buildings are the trademark of numerous European cities, forming a great part of EU Built Heritage, reflecting and shaping the identity of local, national and multinational societies. Historic buildings, although many designed with the wisdom of traditional builders or architects who understood extremely well the relationship of building to local climate, these structures are often by definition ineffective in terms of energy consumption for heating and cooling based on today's standards.
Among the biggest restoration and renovation challenges is to enhance the energy performance of historic buildings without harming their historic character. In many cases, these buildings are exempt from energy performance standards.
Moreover, cultural heritage buildings have many particularities and thus the optimal solutions are highly case-specific and depend on a large number of parameters that go beyond simple objective measures, like the value of authenticity, the acceptable uses, education on appropriate user behavior, and more.
Target audience
We aim to address researchers and professionals from a wide range of different fields related to the restoration of cultural heritage buildings. From material engineers to historians, from net zero and passive house experts to user behaviour analysts, from architects to ICT tools developers, from climate modelling scientists to storytellers.
The goal is not to report on highly specialized innovations but to understand the target of sustainable restoration of cultural heritage buildings to its full complexity, and develop effective strategies and coalitions across professional sectors and scientific disciplines.
More specifically, the organizers of this session are partners of the SINCERE project, and will explicitly invite actors from the EU Horizon Europe ecosystem creating bridges between more technology-oriented projects like those under the Built4People topic with projects and more community-oriented projects linked to the New European Bauhaus initiative.
Session organizers
Dr. Elias Messinas, Architect/Urban Planner/ECOAMA/ ECOWEEK, Holon Institute of Technology, Israel
Dr. Panayotis Antoniadis, NETHOOD, Switzerland
Call for papers
The submission details and technical committee will be announced soon.
About CHNT
For 30 years, the Conference on Cultural Heritage and New Technologies (CHNT) has served as a premier platform for professionals, researchers, and institutions dedicated to the advancement of cultural heritage preservation through innovative technologies. Founded by Wolfgang Börner and originally organized by Stadtarchäologie Wien, CHNT has grown into a renowned international event, fostering interdisciplinary exchange in the fields of documentation, research, management, and conservation of cultural heritage.
With the transition of CHNT to the National Committee of ICOMOS Austria, the conference is now supported by the Austrian Focal Point for World Heritage at the Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, Public Service, and Sport.