Retrofit of Heritage Structures: Sustaining Environment and Culture

Retrofitting and reusing existing structures instead of demolishing and rebuilding them is an environmentally sensitive way to deal with aging building stock. The carbon footprint of the former action can be shown to be significantly smaller than that of the latter. When the buildings in question have historic significance, there is the added question of sustaining cultural heritage. Retrofit approaches in seismically active California, USA, are presented and two examples of heritage building renovations that adopted very different seismic retrofit strategies are presented.