Building redevelopment as a catalyst for sustainability? - Assessing the renovation of the Pier Arts Centre, along technical, social and economic sustainability indicators

Building redevelopment, even when aimed at greater performance and sustainability, is often carried out in isolation and with a narrow focus on technical and design aspects, with little thought to the building’s context and its wider impacts. These wider impacts on cultural, social, economic and environmental sustainability are also often not assessed, or very cursorily so and over a short time frame, which gives little indication of long-term impacts. Taking a case of an art centre which has acted as a driver of wide and enduring positive sustainability impacts in the local community, this study shows possibility of assessing systematically such impacts of a redevelopment project using a specially developed multidisciplinary methodology over a range of measurable sustainability indicators and a collection of data covering the years before and after the project’s completion. The assessment suggests the project has a number of successful outcomes and some areas for improvement over the three pillars of sustainability and building performance as an art gallery. Discussions are given at the end on the lessons to be learned from the project in terms of effective building redevelopment in context, showing that this case study can be an inspiration for redevelopment approaches in other locations.