Innovating built heritage: Adapt the past for the future

The contemporary worldwide targets towards sustainability, especially when regarding the building sector, have been guiding many researchers and technicians through the development of new challenges in the building industry. Many outlines came throughout, but mostly considering new buildings, where new technologies as well as new materials did not have to deal with a pre-existent environment. With a large scale of urbanized areas, from past and present generations, we face an entire stock of resources that has been underestimated, by society and consequently by their social actors. This same stock of resources embodies different buildings, technologies and materials, mostly designed without any predetermined lifespan and built without giving much importance for the service life of their spaces, structures, and materials.