Sameh Shamout

Jordan is witnessing a growing market trend of retrofitting existing buildings. The annual construction work on existing buildings in Amman, based on building consents, increased by approximately 46% between 2007 and 2017, while the annual newly built areas decreased by around 33%. This paper aims to establish a solid understanding of the current shift towards existing building adaptation in Jordan by exploring the drivers for this trend and the Government’s role in regulating and, possibly, encouraging it. Ten local experts with extensive experience in retrofitting projects in Jordan and around the region were interviewed. The qualitative and quantitative analysis of experts’ answers was performed using the software NVivo. Findings highlight nine main drivers for retrofitting existing buildings in Jordan, namely: (1) land value and location; (2) reducing capital costs compared to new builds; (3) architectural heritage conservation; (4) social and cultural considerations; (5) adapting to population increase; (6) reusing, adapting, and retrofitting to extend the life of buildings; (7) increasing tourism capacity; (8) improving building performance and resource efficiency; and (9) municipal incentives. Not all these drivers have the same value as they depend on the client and the project context. The experts’ ranking of drivers in terms of priority showed higher consideration for land value and location benefits, social–cultural aspects, and population increase, while municipal incentives emerged as low priority. Further research is needed to design context-specific effective retrofit policies, contributing to the literature in this emerging field in Jordan and beyond.

Previous studies show that moderate thermal mass in school building elements can positively impact the winter indoor thermal environment in a temperate climate with mild, humid winters. Based on a field study, this research contributes new physical data of the summer indoor thermal environment of Auckland school buildings with different designs of moderate thermal mass in their building elements to add to the previous winter field-study data and demonstrates that a school building with moderate thermal mass is adequate in a temperate climate with mild, humid winters and warm, dry summers. This field study compared and evaluated the summer indoor thermal environment of classrooms with different moderate thermal mass in their building elements during the summer school term and the summer school holidays. This study found that a classroom with thermal mass in its building elements has 19% to 21% more time in summer than a classroom without any thermal mass in its building elements when indoor air temperatures are within the thermal comfort zone, which was solely impacted by the building’s thermal performance. This study established a suitable research method to analyse the field-study data and identify the differences in the indoor thermal environments of the school buildings with different designs of moderate thermal mass in their building elements.