Over the last couple of years, local inhabitants and students have witnessed the change brought about by the BRICKER project. The building’s façade was stripped down and fitted with breathing, aesthetic windows. But it wasn’t just the façades that have changed; inside the college too, the air has become cleaner, heat has become greener, and energy bills have been cut.
The set of retrofitting measures is now complete and on 6 March the demo site owner, Province of Liège, organised the official opening of the revamped site. A number of regional journalists attended the morning’s press conference given by provincial deputies Muriel Brodure-Willain, in charge of education and André Denis, in charge of public works. Talking of the impact that BRICKER has had on the college, Muriel Brodure-Willain was keen to point out « it concerns all of our 1,200 students who attend classes at this site. It has made a general improvement to all of the college’s premises, whether it be standard teaching rooms, science labs, IT workshops and physiotherapy rooms »
In the evening, some 100 guests attended the official inauguration of the retrofitted building. They included project partners, local officials from the Province of Liège, local stakeholders keen to learn about replicability to other places, and members of staff and students. Raymond Charlier*, industrial engineer for the Province de Liège who oversaw the site works, organised guided visits of the biomass boiler, the ventilation, heat exchanger and insulation systems.
Today as the BRICKER project comes to an end, the Haute Ecole will remain a telling showcase of what it means to retrofit a public building. It will serve as a beacon of green energy, an inspiring real-life example for the college students who themselves are set to face the realities of climate change over their engineering careers.
See here a new report about the works with Raymond Charlier (in French).
23 March 2018