C O N T E X T 1 1 9 : M A Y 2 0 1 1 41 Book reviews Future matters The Green Guide for Historic Buildings: how to improve the environmental performance of listed and historic buildings The Prince’s Regeneration Trust,TSO, 123pp, tables and 54 colour photos, ISBN 978 0 117068 44 5, £24.99 This is a very good practical primer which deals with environmental performance in a holistic way. It sets out the considerations and issues in the use of historic buildings, and the way in which they can be adapted to reduce energy demand and act as vehicles for cleaner energy generation in a manner which pays respect to their significance and character. It takes an overall view of understanding the significance, design and potential for future use of the building in which owner, architect and conservation officer can work with the grain of the building to assess net financial and carbon savings of each alteration before, during and after the works. The soft cover book first summarises statutory requirements and policy. It then outlines the considerations in planning a sustainable project by making the most of the building’s design, gathering data on its energy usage and considering new uses which complement the building’s character and potentialities. The most important starting point is to reduce demand for energy by adaptations commensurate with the qualities and significance of the building. Only when the reduction of heating and lighting needs have been addressed should the designer/manager consider cleaner energy for heating and hot water from solar thermal, biomass or heat pumps (ground air or water), or for electricity from photovoltaic, wind or hydro, or a combination using combined cooling heat and power or combined heat and power. Renewable sources can be used in combination (such as biomass for winter and solar thermal for summer), tuned to diurnal peaks and seasonal energy demand. The chapters are widely illustrated, laced with telling case studies, including field barns in the Yorkshire dales with separate moveable energy pods, Edinburgh tenements and Castle Howard. The case studies are interspersed with helpful hints and tips, and the occasional decision tree for exploring the choices between the various green technologies for heat or electricity generation. Six useful appendices provide information on funding sources, grants, loans and tax reliefs, with extensive weblinks to organisations, schemes, products and suppliers. Cost effectiveness analysis of financial payback and environmental impact, though simple, is helpful in appreciating the balance of advantage of various measures. A glossary and bibliography provide incentives for further reading and a useful overview of English Heritage guidance, Energy Saving Trust studies and Changeworks technical solutions for projects on Edinburgh’s historic flats. The publication gives an overall and balanced view for intervention in improving the sustainability of historic buildings. It provides sage advice and eschews rigid nostrums. It repays re-reading and re-examination of case studies as an aid to thought for a problem in hand. As conservationists seek to repair and maintain historic buildings, and maximise their contribution to averting climate change, this book provides ‘joined-up thinking’ (as Prince Charles puts it in the foreword) in stewardship of the heritage. Graham Arnold, formerWirral conservation officer Cultural cleansing The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom Edited by Chris Miele, Merrell Publishers, 2010, 221pp, ISBN 978 1 858945 07 1, £35 This handsomely produced book brings together the history and significance of the building, and the legal background to how the former Middlesex Guildhall has come to be the pinnacle of the UK’s system of justice. It explains that the Supreme Court was created to separate the apex court of the judiciary from the upper house of the legislature. The present building, designed by the Scottish architect James Gibson, was opened in 1913. It succeeded two previous Guildhalls on this site, the first being by SP Cockerell. Gibson saw his design as ‘a dainty piece of ornament set amongst the austere and formal buildings of the neighbourhood’. In any other context his use of gothic for a public building would be surprising by this date. Here it is a reference to its illustrious Westminster neighbours. The extent of the sculptural ornament on the main front was not on the design drawings. The quality of Henry Fehr’s work is undoubted: the figures symbolising arts, science and industry are described as ‘among the most imaginative features of the building’. A chapter explains the symbolic and historic imagery of the exterior and interior sculptural detail, and of the exquisitely carved furnishings. Pages 84 to 91 have an informative series of before-and-after pictures, showing the furnishings that were controversially removed or altered.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjgyMjA=