Kulturola. Rehabilitating heritage.
About this good practice
Kulturola was the main building of an old factory called “Unión Cerrajera Mondragonesa” and after more than a century of industrial activity it was definitely closed at the end of the XX. Century. In 2004 the Cultural Heritage Department of the Basque Government finished validating the process to declare the building as Industrial Heritage.
With this new label and wanting to maintain the building, a rehabilitation process was proposed: working together with citizens and local cultural associations it was decided to give a second chance and to modulate the area.
The project needed a previous analysis: the needs of each local association who would be the users of the building, as well as the needs of infrastructure itself. Once all of those were defined, a company was hired to start the construction.
All the specificities were considered when finding the providers, which was a challenge itself. At the end, the building looks like the one from the beginning of the XX century, but it is completely new: it is energy efficient; the heating-cooling systems are new, the lighting is all led technology, and it self-consumes almost the 30% of the energy that it needs; but it preserves its character and historical sense.
With this good practice, all the city will benefit: they will have a brand new building for social activities, also the neighbourhood will have a lot of life and social activity and also the environment itself will improve, because it is an energy efficient building.
Resources needed
The overall budget has been over 7 million euros.
An external company was contracted to write, develop, and execute the rehabilitation. City council architect and technicians have worked closely with the company to achieve the expected results.
Evidence of success
The building is not completely functional yet, so the local associations have not been able to perform their activities, hence it is not possible to determine the difference in their energy consumption. However, the energy efficiency certificate shows that the improvement of the building has been notorious.
Furthermore, 60 kW solar panel plant has been installed on the roof; so, this action itself, is an evidence of success, because the building and its users will be self-consumers.
Potential for learning or transfer
This practice could not be easily transferred due to the peculiarity of the building: it has an industrial heritage certification and this characteristic, narrows a lot the possibility of intervention.
Even though there are lots of building with different kind of labels, mostly related to heritage, it can be extremely difficult to implement a rehabilitation process, not only due to the administrative restrictions but also because it might need lot of founding, but with this practice it wants to be shown that is not impossible to intervene in such kind of building and different examples can be found around Europe.
Good practice owner
You can contact the good practice owner below for more detailed information.