With street names such as Temperance and Hygiene and plenty of green open spaces, the 1920s Bon Air (Good Air) housing estate in a working-class district of Brussels was meant to provide a healthy “garden city” way of life.
Now 21st-century planners are striving to turn it into a modern ideal with the kind of renovations EU policymakers sitting in their shiny offices across the city want to see throughout the European Union.
Work starts in Bon Air in September to transform a prototype from damp and dingy into a light, well-ventilated and very low-energy home.
It is the model for 86 social houses in Bon Air and La Roue (the Wheel), another housing estate in the same Brussels district of Anderlecht, with a budget of €17.4m ($19.7m).
In the European Commission, meanwhile, policymakers have begun a review of EU buildings law. The aim is to work out how to enforce requirements that all new buildings be nearly zero-energy by the end of 2020 and to transform existing property, tackling 80% or more of a building.
As a bloc, the 28-member EU spends more than a billion euros a day on importing fossil fuel, much of which is used by buildings, chiefly for heating and cooling. The Commission says buildings consume 40% of EU energy.
Smarter building, it says, creates millions of jobs, fuels growth and cuts health bills.
“This sector is ready and waiting to eclipse shale gas as the biggest source of energy saved in this case,” Barry Lynham, director of strategy for German firm Knauf Insulation, said.
Fuel charges for the Bon Air prototype will shrink from an estimated nearly €6,000 euros per year to €580 after the renovation, its architects say.
A major obstacle is the initial outlay, which has limited deep renovation to barely 1% of buildings per year versus a non-binding EU goal of 3%.
Those behind the Anderlecht project say the cost - which in this case includes extending the property, as well as insulation, a new heating system and new windows - is not the sole consideration.
