B³-RETROTOOL: DEVELOPMENT OF A MULTI-SCALE AND MULTI-CRITERIA PRE-ASSESSMENT TOOL FOR THE SUSTAINABLE RETROFIT OF BRUSSELS CAPITAL REGION

This research offers a new vision of Brussels Capital Region (BCR) as an Urban Metabolism in which the building blocks are one key element to enhance heritage value, to achieve important improvements in the energy performance and to reduce environmental impact of existing residential building stock. Four scales were integrated in the study: the city, the neighbourhood, the city block and the residential buildings. This research focused on the definition of criteria for each of these scales to identify building and built environment typologies and propose suitable urban or architectural interventions in for each typologies to preserve heritage value reduce relevant energy use and environmental impact. The main objective of the research is to achieve a pre-assessment tool to retrofit the city, the neighbourhood, the city block and the residential buildings based on an integrated multi-criteria and multi-scale approach in order to meet the environmental, social and economic challenges of the contemporary world and thus foster the transition towards sustainable development This research also pinpoints the importance of transforming city blocks, as a basic unit of the urban matrix. The originality of this project is thus to identify new determinants in designing modern, economic and efficient city blocks using a multi-criteria and multi-scale approach. The key is probably to consider these aspects in a non-compartmentalized, complementary way, in order to reach a global objective through a sustainable and responsible approach.