Abstract
The sustainable refurbishment of the existing building stock is a key issue in achieving the ambitious long-term energy and
environmental goals of the European Union. Europe has a vast building stock built with prefabricated reinforced concrete largepanel
construction technology after World War II to decrease the general housing shortage, mostly in the Eastern-European
countries and East Germany.
This study focuses on the environmental evaluation of the retrofitting of the existing precast large-panel building stock in
Hungary and provides a decision support tool for the architectural design process by identifying the largest environmental
impacts. Different scenarios, including demolition/new construction and various refurbishment levels, were analyzed through life
cycle assessment and considering the potential impacts throughout the building’s lifetime. The effect of building lifetime and
calculation period on the environmental performance was evaluated in detail.
The typology of the precast large-panel building stock was set up by grouping buildings according to their age, architecture and
technical parameters. The methodology is demonstrated on a case study area: the Kelenföld housing estate in Budapest
(Hungary) built in 1965-75 was chosen for the analysis. After assessing the environmental performance of the determined types,
the mitigation potential of the housing estate was estimated.