Creating a residential building database: Sources, contents ans reliability

Abstract

Nowadays, it is totally assumed that the historic city centres must be protected, being conservation, maintenance and enhancement of the existing residential buildings a must to guarantee their preservation, instead of removal and demolition. However, many residential buildings in old city centres do not meet the habitability, sanitation or energy efficiency requirements. Therefore, retrofitting and modernisation is needed in order to improve the quality of life of their inhabitants. The aim of this paper is to point out the pressing need of creating old city centres residential building databases including not only age, dimensions or number of storeys, but also structural system, construction materials (facades, parting walls, roofing, etc.) and graphic information (pictures, layouts, documents), essential to understand each building in its context, to highlight its values and to guarantee a sustainable retrofitting. A case study focused on the historic centre of Valencia is described and details are given about each source, including not only historic archives but also websites of real estate agencies and on-site study campaigns. Finally, the reliability of the most available sources is analysed and discussed attending to the personal experience of the authors.