Hof Ter Laken is part of a larger series of country estates on the banks of the “Grote Nete“ in the vicinity of Heist-op-den-Berg. Situated in the heart of Booischot, the estate was build in the 18th century. The beautiful castle can be reached via the Hofdreef, which is fenced off with lime trees. Scattered over the estate are several outbuildings, including the castle farm (the so-called ‘depot’ with stables, coach house, baking oven, etc.) and the forester’s house.
The castle estate was purchased by the municipality of Heist-op-den-Berg and Kempens Landschap in the summer of 2018. The park has been open to the public since the autumn of 2018. The aim is to restore the buildings in the coming years and give them a new function, with respect for heritage and the greatest possible social added value.
Since there were also two annex buildings (barns) with a lower historical value nearby the depot, it was decided to deconstruct these. The spatial implementation plan for Hof Ter Laken provides that new volumes could be built in place, in order to increase the economic feasibility of the whole project. The same counts for the interior of one wing of the depot/stables complex
In the coming years, a major restoration of the castle and outbuildings will take place, for which the current demolition works form an initial preparation
The project is carried by a founding, named Stichting Kempens Landschap. This is a Belgian organization, that is part of the provincial government of Antwerp. The organization aims to preserve and revitalize heritage sites and valuable landscapes for the community. Since 2018 she owns the castle grounds of Hof Ter Laken, together with the municipality of Heist-op-den-Berg. For the guidance, supervision and follow-up of the deconstruction, Kempens Landscape enlisted the services of the architectural firm Erfgoed & Visie, which worked together with their sister organization U-Mine
All materials were sorted. The non-valuable (e.g. metal pipes) were removed, the valuable materials, such as the bricks in the walls, old floor tiles or reusable windows, were carefully cleaned, counted, measured if necessary and safely stored on site.
Overview of elements to be preserved in situ, because of their historical and economic value, and the fact that we can easily reuse them on site
The materials that were removed for reuse will all be reused on the site of Hof ter Laken itself, during the restoration of the castle, depot/stables, conservatory and aviary. This big restoration works start in 2023. So these were all stored on the domain itself, in provided chests, on transpallets outside or in a dry indoor space. Other materials were all recycled and disposed of in containers by fraction to a sorting plant.
Valuable roof tiles were cleaned and stored in wooden bins that can be left outside.
Valuable masonry was also stripped of mortar residue and stored on pallets, wrapped in plastic. These are also stored outside, behind some fences.
The materials that cannot withstand moisture or fluctuating temperatures, such as wooden elements, are stored in an interior space, arranged by type of material.
The link to the online location of the 3D scan was included in the specification documents of the public tendering, and thus provided to candidate contractors. In addition to a mandatory physical field visit, most of them used the 3D scans to visit the building visually, especially during the preparation of their price offer, to have a good overview of the buildings outside and inside.
If the materials inventory would have been drawn up in the Cirdax system, this link could also be included in the tendering documents, and be used during the deconstruction itself to keep an overview of the materials. But now our own material inventory was used for this goal.
The Reverse-BIM model does not seem to offer much added value for contractors.
The 3D scan is very valuable to give people a quick virtual tour of the buildings, without going on site.
If the Reverse-BIM model were correct and included reliable information on the percentages of reuse and recycling, CO2 savings and economic impact, these graphs and images would also be a very strong tool to present the project to third parties.
When the Cirdax tool could be connected to the 3D scan and Reverse-BIM, so that people could automatically see the material passport when clicking on an element, this would also be a nice and powerful feature for presentations of a project to external stakeholders. But this link is currently missing.
BIM 3D scan and view of the virtual visit after scanning
RBIM of the Hof Ter Laken pilot site
Heritage buildings and sustainability go hand in hand. Yet it is not an easy task to draw up an inventory of the materials in a historic building and then deconstruct them effectively. In order to achieve this ambition in the restoration of the outbuildings at Hof Ter Laken, Kempens Landschap could count on the support of a whole range of digital tools from the Digital Deconstruction project. Heritage buildings and sustainability go hand in hand. Yet it is not an easy task to draw up an inventory of the materials in a historic building and then deconstruct them effectively. In order to achieve this ambition in the restoration of the outbuildings at Hof Ter Laken, Kempens Landschap could count on the support of a whole range of digital tools from the Digital Deconstruction project.
Enclosed the case study in :
Kempens Landschap also finished the report on the demolition works of the stables of the castle Hof ter Laken.