By Jonathan Napolitano, LEED Green Associate

With care and sustainable redevelopment, disregarded historical buildings can be restored as valuable community landmarks. The concept of embodied cultural energy has emerged as a means to define the tangible impact and historical relevance of a building on the surrounding community. Embodied energy refers to a building’s raw materials, while cultural energy is an attempt to quantify a building’s impact on the history and culture of a community. Communal influence does not always correlate with historic preservation; however, growth and expansion can originate from preservation.

Despite rapid growth in the United States, communities still have ways to minimize impacts to historic properties. Exploring cultural embodied energy is key to encouraging preservation. Discussions of cultural embodied energy with Dr. Simi Hoque, a distinguished architectural engineer and associate professor at Drexel University, inspired my study, “Cultural Embodied Energy in Historical Buildings in the Philadelphia Region.” The study involved three main components; the first of which was conducting a basic survey to understand the community’s views on the building. The second was modeling the raw material global warming equivalent and completing a general LEED® Core and Shell Certification analysis of the building. The third and final component of the study was analyzing the results to determine the value – financially and sustainably – of preserving the building.

“Cultural embodied energy is a valuable resource that is not often a high priority for some engineers,” according to Dr. Hoque. “It is necessary to rewrite the normal practices to understand and better utilize the opportunity that the embodied energy can provide for communities.”

A considered candidate for the study would be a building that is recognizable in Philadelphia’s history. For example, the Inquirer Building – the former home of the Philadelphia Inquirer - would be ideal if there were not current plans for it. This building has a unique shape and iconic clock tower. Most Philadelphians would likely say it has cultural energy as it is an iconic building with that has made an impact.

There are many ways to measure a building’s impacts on a community. The most common method is observing the change in property value. However, this can be inaccurate, since surrounding and adjacent properties influence value. Another method is collecting poverty data on the community, a measure that would quantify how well economically an area is performing. A third option, specifically for a sustainable project, is identifying the global warming impacts of the building. The best route combines analysis of: community opinions, property values, poverty levels, and global warming equivalent levels.

This approach mimics the Triple Bottom Line, a performance concept which guides LEED projects and measures community, economic, and environmental benefits. This Triple Bottom Line-influenced analysis would work perfectly to study the recent restoration of the Divine Lorraine Hotel. Originally designed as an apartment complex in the late 1800s, the Divine Lorraine had fallen into a state of disrepair. In 2016, the historic building was revitalized.