Uncompromising New Building Regulations Construction

The new Building Regulations, which were presented yesterday and approved by the Council of Ministers, are now under consultation.

The most significant change in relation to the draft law submitted for consultation to professional bodies
is the reduction of the maximum plot coverage to 60%, which leads – under certain conditions –
to the unsealing of the soil, while the energy footprint of the building now plays a decisive role.

The new KD provides the researcher with a series of mainly morphological tools (change in the concept of semi-open space, recesses, stairwells, atria and arcades that are not counted in the building volume, installation of elevators in the D without counting them in the coverage, etc.).

However, despite the enrichment of the vocabulary used to describe the building, the new KD is tentative when it comes to establishing a higher standard of urban fabric in terms of urban infrastructure.

The city and its roles
The new “memorandum” Regulation does not provide substantial incentives for the consolidation of building blocks,
resulting in a lack of business interest,
which could change the scale of the city, as published exclusively by ered.gr on 24/2.

In practice, the required intermediate scale (1/500) is absent, which perpetuates a contractor-oriented market
and limits the possibility of urban interventions and renovations by development companies that are required to have an architectural study in order for the project to be financed by the banking system.

In the direction this deficit constitutes the non-institutionalization of the withdrawal of old criteria of the primary and of the tertiary sector (offices, hotels, industrial buildings), which would mark an influx of new capital into the construction market with a different logic from that of the consideration.

With regard to license revisions, the Ministry of Environment, Energy, and Climate Change allows them to be carried out only on those that are in force, essentially forcing those who have exceeded the limits to go through the law for the regularization of unauthorized and semi-open structures.

The… windows
Of course, for expired licenses, one could proceed with the issuance of a new license, as with the new Building Code there will be an additional Building Coefficient that has not been exhausted.
It would therefore be advisable for owners who want to regularize their situation to consider which solution is most advantageous for them, especially in basements that have been converted into playrooms!

All incentives established as derogations are included in Article 10 of the KD. Lofts, semi-open spaces, the new volume coefficient, and its calculation for both the energy efficiency of the building and the configuration of the ideal solid are included in the bill posted on opengov.

Yannis D. Papadomarkakis

29-02-2012, 12:21