As a professor for sustainability of architectural heritage, relationships between research and practice have been at the core of a project I conducted in the Palace of Westminster Restoration and Renewal Programme (R&R) over the last four years. Its purpose, driven by my academic research, was to gain a comprehensive understanding of the Palace's 19th century ventilation system. It is one of the earliest public buildings designed with a fully integrated system of climatic control and ventilation. The gothic towers conceal the utilitarian shafts for a historic system of stack ventilation connected to an internal network of flues and channels. This research is the subject of my new book Rebuilding the Palace of Westminster - David Boswell Reid and Disruptive Environmental-ism. It retraces the history of the original system, developed and constructed over the period from 1835 to 1855, and examines how it performed historically and how and why it was modified over its 100-year operational life.
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