Sustainable Approaches to Reusing Earthquake Prone Buildings

Situated in the context of reusing Wellington’s earthquake-prone buildings, this research focuses on balancing historic values and environmental impacts. The city’s location on a major fault-line means urgently addressing issues in these earthquake-prone buildings is crucial. The problem is that the perceived easiest approach is often demolition and building anew but there are reasons to explore alternatives. To encourage alternatives to demolition, providing sustainable approaches to reusing these buildings is needed.

This research explores the complex intersection of historic values and environmental impacts relevant to Aotearoa’s earthquake-prone buildings. This complexity required a mixed-method research approach used to understand the context of Wellington’s earthquake-prone buildings, reuse approaches, historic values and environmental impacts. Design explorations employed life cycle assessments, energy simulations and digital modelling to balance environmental, historic and regenerative values in the reuse of an existing building.

This thesis reveals opportunities for celebrating historic values in undervalued buildings alongside software limitations which create barriers for understanding environmental impacts. The main findings of this research are sustainable strategies for reusing earthquake-prone buildings at their perceived end of life.