Across Eastern Europe a significant part of the housing stock consists of drab, prefabricated mass housing built in the 1960s and 70s. While their original grey facades have, since the lifting of the Iron Curtain, been updated with new colours, they’re in the main an unimpressive sight.
But as the planet hurtles towards 2 degrees warming, which means more heatwaves and severe weather, the uniformity of these buildings makes them suitable candidates for mass thermal retrofit programmes.
Their utilitarian design means they have significant potential for climate change adaptation, according to a report by Polish researchers (Mańkowski and Szczechowiak, 2013) cited by the Polish Ministry of Development and Technology’s building energy performance enhancement guide.
