Performance optimisation of the building envelope. Case studies on recently constructed residential buildings in the United Kingdom

In the UK, the policy and practical drive for both new housing and carbon are achieving massive growth in the available stock and huge reductions in energy consumption per unit. The enormous new stock will, however, be almost immediately outdated by the arrival of the more restrictive rules under “The Future Homes Standard”. These events are a mirror image of the current and near-future ones occurring in all the nations of the European Union. The construction industries and real estate sectors of all these nations are faced with the looming obligations of retrofitting the housing just completed or even still in creation, in order to achieve the mandatory energy classes. In the light of this, the research reported addresses the adequate need for short and long-term strategies to rework our recently constructed buildings. The methodological approach is applied to the cases of two residential buildings recently built in the framework of an urban regeneration plan for northern England.