From the Back Cover
This book presents a new approach to building renovation, combining aspects of various professional disciplines, integrating green building design, structural stability, and energy efficiency. It draws attention to several often-overlooked qualities of buildings that should be comprehensively integrated into the context of building renovation.
The book presents an overview of the most important renovation approaches according to their scope, intensity, and priorities. Combining basic theoretical knowledge and the authors' scientific research it emphasizes the importance of simultaneous consideration of energy efficiency and structural stability in building renovation processes. It simultaneously analyses the effects of various renovation steps related to the required level of energy efficiency, while it also proposes the options of building extension with timber-glass upgrade modules as the solution to a shortage of usable floor areas occurring in large cities.
This book offers building designers and decision makers a tool for predicting energy savings in building renovation processes and provides useful guidelines for architects, city developers and students studying architecture and civil engineering. Additionally, it demonstrates how specific innovations, e.g., building extensions with timber-glass modules, can assist building industry companies in the planning and development of their future production.
The main aim of the current book is to expose various approaches to the renovation of existing buildings and to combine practical experience with existing research, in order to disseminate knowledge and raise awareness on the importance of integrative and interdisciplinary solutions.
Vesna Zegarac Leskovar is an associate professor in the field of Architecture and spatial planning at the University of Maribor, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Transportation Engineering and Architecture (UM FGPA). After initially educating and working as an architect she received a Ph.D. in Architecture at the Technical University Graz, Faculty of Architecture. At UM FGPA she lectures courses on sustainable architecture, architectural structures and technology, energy-efficient building design with a special focus on timber buildings. Regarding her project work, she is a leader or a team member of numerous research and development projects carried out for national and European industrial partners, research organisations and also of numerous students workshops developing innovative ideas for local environment and national companies. Her research focuses on the issues related to sustainable building design covering the topics of energy efficiency, bioclimatic design, environmental assessment of buildings and building renovation. Her research work is published in numerous papers in international scientific journals indexed by JCR and SNIP, while she is also the author of many international conference contributions and publications. She is active as the reviewer for the most reputable international journals from the field of energy efficiency in buildings. In 2013 she published a scientific monograph "Energy-Efficient Timber-Glass Houses" by Springer Verlag, which was selected by Slovenian research agency (ARRS) as the best scientific contribution in civil engineering in Slovenia for the year 2013.
Miroslav Premrov was elected in the full professor degree for "Timber and concrete structures" in the year 2009. He is an author or a co-author of 45 research papers indexed by SCI and reviewer for the most reputable international journals in the field of civil engineering. He is an editorial board member of five international journals indexed by JCR. He is a co-author of a patent of a strengthened prefabricated timber-framed wall element. As a member of WG 5, he is active in preparations of Slovene standards in the field of timber structures. As a co-author he published in the year 2008 a university course book "Timber Structures" and in the year 2011 a scientific monograph "Experimental analysis on behaviour of timber-framed walls with different types of sheathing boards". In 2013 he published a scientific monograph "Energy-Efficient Timber-Glass Houses" by Springer Verlag, which was selected by Slovenian research agency (ARRS) as the best scientific contribution in civil engineering in Slovenia in this year.
From the year 1999 he has been actively dealing with the problems of strengthening in composite timber elements mainly used in multi-storey prefabricated timber buildings. In year 2010 he started with a wide research in timber-glass buildings interlaying structural and energy concepts. In the period from 2012 to 2016 he managed Slovenian research team of the international FP 7 project Wood Wisdom entitled "Load-bearing timber-glass composites" and was also at the same time responsible for the Work Package 6 "Testing on life-size specimen components".
Since 2009 he is a dean of the Faculty of Civil Engineering, Transportation Engineering and Architecture at University of Maribor and since 2017 he is a Slovenian presenter in EMC FEANI.
