It is well known that to achieve a reduction in energy consumption and to mitigate its collateral effects a deliberate and thorough restoration of many buildings is necessary. Recent legislation makes this clear but also states that protected buildings are exempt. Nevertheless, for a number of years in much of Europe – and in our country too – the will has existed to include the buildings that are part of our cultural heritage in this scheme of things and to ensure that they too are sustainable and, obviously, more economically viable – regardless of whether or not the law makes such reforms obligatory. Yet, this desire is anything but problem free and inevitably clashes with the type of restoration work to be undertaken, the typical criteria involved in the design of a building’s installations and the way in which people will use these installations, all of which essentially are only applicable to modern or recently constructed buildings.

This Course is based on our own experience and that of other professionals and specialists and aims to provide students with the necessary tools for analysing conflicts and the basic criteria for solving them.

The Course begins on day 1 with a general introduction that will discuss various aspects of our knowledge of how energy and buildings interact, degrees of comfort and methodologies that help define the monumental value of a building.

During the following two days students will be encouraged to analyse and reflect on the causes of conflicts in real-life situations. We will also discuss various examples of practices that are good examples of the diversity of solutions that can be found to the problem of integrating energy efficiency and the conservation of our built heritage.

The programme also includes a presentation of the initial results of the project Improvements in the energy efficiency of listed buildings: real case-studies carried out by the organizers of the Course and winners of a research grant since 2011 awarded by the programme Recercaixa. This project has enabled the organizers to establish contacts with numerous people and specialists working in the same field, both at home and abroad, who have helped combine many of the relevant and innovative ideas that will be presented during this Course.