The need to improve the energy performance of European buildings is beyond all doubt, as indicated by the different regulatory determinations on energy and climate change adopted by different public administrations in recent years. The primary actions have focused on improving the thermal enclosure of buildings; the placement of new energy-efficient skins on their exterior façades is consequently beginning to deconfigure, distort, homogenize and globalize the city in an alarming manner. In the case of Spain, the lack of a specific regulation on how to proceed when renovating the vast majority of residential buildings without heritage protection is leaving the ultimate decision in the hands of owner associations. It is therefore urgent to endow municipal administrations with a tool enabling them to regulate and control the transformation of a city’s image before it is too late. To that end, a pioneer methodology is proposed to classify the unprotected building stock of a municipality with a view to future renovation actions, depending on the degree of their vulnerability and the greater or lesser need to protect their image and the other pre-existing features. As a theoretical case study to test the proposed methodology, the locality of Errenteria, Spain, was chosen, demonstrating that it is an effective tool easy to apply in any city nationwide, regardless of the respective location, size and management capacity.

The debate about how to conduct energy interventions in built heritage remains open. At present, the various European and national regulations allow the absence of energy intervention in cases where the character of a building with recognized heritage value would be jeopardized. This situation means that heritage preservation and energy improvement are divided into two airtight and unconnected blocs. It is possible and necessary to break that dichotomy by taking steps that enable both blocs to interrelate. Based on a methodology previously proposed by the authors to regulate changes in the urban landscape due to the rehabilitation of residential building façades, as a novel aspect, this article proposes taking a further step in the methodological process. Several criteria to balance the level of energy intervention for all buildings are thus introduced, according to the urban and architectural characteristics of each building, irrespective of their use and degree of protection. It is concluded that such a balance is possible when certain indicators are used and when determined action criteria are applied. However, one of the architectural characteristics more susceptible to being affected when undertaking an energy intervention on a building’s thermal enclosure is the materiality, which becomes especially important in the case of brutalist architecture with reinforced concrete, one of its most identifying features, giving it a specific personality. That architectural movement was therefore chosen for a case study, applying the proposed methodology to three brutalist buildings in the area of San Sebastián, Spain.

The participation of an architect in a judicial process is hardly treated in architecture schools. In many cases, these processes culminate with an oral hearing in which judges, lawyers, attorneys, experts, plaintiffs and defendants, witnesses and other agents represent, like in a play, their different roles. The exercise presented in this paper, first proposed three years ago and which has been evolving both in its wording and in its materialization, aims to rehearse all those analogical skills that an architect must show before such an imposing stage and totally distant from the digital world as a courtroom. Based on a hypothetical lawsuit for property damage, two preparatory sessions are planned prior to the third and final session: the oral hearing. This is the activity most highly valued by students in the anonymous surveys conducted at the end of the course. La participación de un arquitecto/a en un proceso judicial apenas es tratada en las escuelas de arquitectura. En muchos casos, dichos procesos culminan con una vista oral en la que jueces, letrados/as, procuradores, peritos, partes demandantes y demandadas, testigos y otros agentes van representando, a semejanza de una obra teatral, sus diferentes roles. El ejercicio presentado en esta comunicación, propuesto por primera vez hace tres cursos y que ha ido evolucionando tanto en su enunciado como en su materialización, pretende ensayar todas esas habilidades analógicas que un arquitecto/a debe mostrar ante un escenario tan imponente y alejado totalmente del mundo digital como es una sala de juicios. Partiendo de una hipotética demanda por daños materiales, se plantean dos sesiones preparatorias previas a la tercera y última sesión: la vista oral. Se trata de la actividad más valorada por el alumnado en las encuestas anónimas realizadas a la finalización del curso.